


You Cut Me Open (I Keep Bleeding Love)

by voxofthevoid



Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Deadman Wonderland, Anal Fingering, Anal Sex, Angst and Fluff and Smut, Biting, Blood Manipulation, Bloodplay, Deadman!Viktor, Deadman!Yuuri, Eros Katsuki Yuuri, Interplay Of Sex & Violence, Light Bondage, M/M, Masochism, Mild Unreliable Narrator Elements, Obsession, Oral Sex, Possessive Behavior, Sadism, Smitten Victor Nikiforov, Suicidal Ideation, Superpowers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-24
Updated: 2017-08-19
Packaged: 2018-11-18 06:32:26
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 4
Words: 30,806
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11285622
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/voxofthevoid/pseuds/voxofthevoid
Summary: Yuuri looks at his opponent, fingers digging into palms, and all of a sudden, he’s twelve and innocent again, staring at a tiny screen as a fey boy with silver hair makes history on the ice.The screen is bigger and the boy a man but the hair, at least, is the same.Yuuri can die a thousand times and still not forget Viktor Nikiforov.Yuuri falls in love twice, first with a boy dancing on the ice and then with a man with heart-shaped smiles. The problem is that the dancing boy dies in an April tragedy and the smiling man is to die by Yuuri’s own hands.The problem is that they’re both one and the same.





	1. tear yourself apart to entertain (waste your pretty face)

**Author's Note:**

> Here’s the Deadman Wonderland AU that no one wanted . But I had a mighty need to write. Please go to the end notes for details on the world of Deadman Wonderland.
> 
>  **Some of you may have seen this fic posted a few weeks ago under a different name.** But I took it down after a day because I decided to make some changes to the direction of the story and add some details. The main parts of Chapter 1 remain the same but I’ve edited in some new things.
> 
> This fic is set before DW canon and doesn’t interfere with its events. The Yuri on Ice timeline is not adhered to though. Now read on and enjoy but be warned that Deadmen tend to be about as sane as Hannibal Lector and that Victor and Yuuri are no exception.

Viktor’s bored.

It may not be the most appropriate feeling that an imminent death match should evoke but Viktor’s been doing this for years and the adrenaline-fuelled, hair-raising fervor of these games has long since been lost to him.

Besides, he’s already met his opponent, a young man with one doe-like eye who’d all but trembled when Viktor smiled at him.

It had been a really nice smile too. He should know. He practices every day.

But Katsuki ‘Raven’ Yuuri had been scared. And it’s not like that reaction is a novelty. Viktor’s used to being feared and is largely apathetic to the potent blend of terror and hatred that saturate his fellow prisoners’ eyes when they see him. So he’s not surprised and he’s certainly not offended but he is very much not looking forward to what is sure to be another match that will be a challenge in name only. Katsuki will see him and piss his pants and Viktor will kill him in terribly gruesome ways to the loud cheers of their virtual audience. And even if, by some miracle, Katsuki manages to put up a fight, Viktor will _still_ kill him in terribly gruesome ways to the loud cheers of their virtual audience

It’s always the same.

Privately, Viktor hopes that the latter scenario would come to pass since it’d be a little more fun that way but he doesn’t have high hopes. He’s been in Deadman Wonderland for nearly six years now and as one of its longest residents, he’s seen the best of the worst that humanity has to offer. He knows Katsuki’s type all too well. They’re the innocent ones, probably framed for crimes never committed and forever unable to reconcile to the violence that’s a Deadman’s lifeblood.

They’re always quick to die.

It’s just bad luck that Katsuki will go by Viktor’s hand which everyone knows is not the kindest way to go because Viktor is a showman down to the marrow of his bones.

It's his best and worst feature.

 

* * *

 

The first upset is Katsuki’s appearance.

Viktor has a sieve for a brain but even he can recall the cute, terrified boy from yesterday quite clearly. Messy dark hair, lone eye wide behind bulky glasses, chapped lips red from gnawing teeth, oversized clothes and fear worn like a second skin – that is the Katsuki Viktor saw.

The creature facing him from the other side of the arena looks nothing like that.

With his hair neatly slicked back and clad in a tight, black catsuit that matches the slick leather of his eye-patch, Katsuki looks like someone else entirely. But what really causes Viktor, who’d been fighting a yawn mere moments ago, to stand straight and take notice is the sinful little smirk flirting with the man’s pretty lips.

It’s like Katsuki has become an entirely different person.

Huh.

Maybe Viktor won’t be too bored after all.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” yowls that familiar voice that hasn’t become any less irritating since the first time Viktor heard it. He tunes out the grating commentary in favor of looking at his opponent. He wants a close look at Katsuki’s eye. Is it the same as it had been yesterday, wide and wavering? Or has it also changed to fit this sleeker, sharper version?

Viktor’s own name brings his attention back to the commentator.

“…veteran Deadman with over five years under his belt, everyone’s beloved _Kingfisher_!”

He smiles and waves to the pixilated images lining the walls, throwing in a wink and a smirk to spice it up.

Showman down to his bones.

“Aaaand the young blood who’s a force to be reckoned with, _Raven_!”

‘A force to be reckoned with’ suggests at least a few past victories. Maybe if Viktor were the type to keep up with competition, he would have known more about this guy but he had stopped doing that a few years into his imprisonment. Even meeting Katsuki yesterday had been more coincidence than calculation.

Ah well, Viktor has always liked surprises.

 

* * *

 

It’s Katsuki who makes the first move but it’s not what Viktor expects.

The boy stalks forward, each step imbued with a kind of grace that’s fundamentally unsettling and equally fascinating, but there’s no hint of blood and so Viktor just watches, curious despite himself.

“It’s good to finally meet you, Viktor Nikiforov.” Katsuki greets in clear, accented English. His voice is soft and sweet, friendly in a way that is so very inappropriate. Viktor immediately decides that he likes it.

“Hello, Yuuri!” Viktor replies in accented Japanese. Picking it up had been inevitable. “Can I call you Yuuri?”

Yuuri sounds better on his lips than Katsuki does in his head. It’s a nice name.

“Of course. May I call you Viktor?”

“Of course,” Viktor parrots, amused in spite of himself by the exchange. Not even five minutes into the match, his expectations are being brushed aside. He can’t help but wonder if the man he had approached yesterday had been another person entirely. But no, he had answered to Katsuki Yuuri even if he’d all but fled from Viktor the next second. And the resemblance is still there, not entirely hidden by this drastic makeover.

“You know, Viktor,” Katsuki purrs, low and throaty, brutally wrenching Viktor’s focus to the here and now. He’s just a little dazed. “I’ve always been a fan of yours.”

Yuuri’s using his mother tongue now, the sounds sinfully soft on his lips, but Viktor’s attention is drawn away by the word ‘fan’. That’s not something he’s ever expected to hear in this place. He used to have many, many fans back in his glory days but this is a first. Or did Yuuri know him from _before_? Viktor doesn’t think he likes that.

Skating shouldn’t be tainted.

“I’ve always been impressed by you, Viktor,” Yuuri continues and Viktor has no choice but to get out of his head, a task that’s becoming increasingly harder these days, and listen. “From the moment I set my eyes on you, I’ve admired you, loved you even-”

Oh, probably from _before_ then since there’s no way-

-but now, I hate you even more.”

Wait.

What?

That’s all the thought he’s allowed before long red whips are slashing at him, effortlessly tearing gashes in his shirt in the one-second delay before Viktor leaps away. The blood whips follow him, bright and thin and sharp, shaving off fabric with each brush and even nicking skin here and there.

Viktor’s own blood wells up from the wounds, spreading along his forearms and sharpening into hard, ragged spears. It’s an automatic reflex and not enough to block the fast whips striking at him, one of which tears a shallow gash down Viktor’s chest. The edges of his shirt fall to the sides, baring his new wound. The pain is immediate but negligible.

Pain is always negligible.

Katsuki Yuuri is far more worthy of his attention, especially when he’s talking.

“Oh, you’re bleeding,” Yuuri says, his eye unusually wide as it darts between Viktor’s exposed chest and his face. It’s the same expression Viktor saw on Yuuri yesterday but it where it had made him look nervous then, it now serves to turn his soft-lined face into something utterly demented.

That toothy, delighted grin probably has something to do with that.

“Yes, I am,” Viktor responds drily, automatically. He’s a little confused. “Congratulations.”

Yuuri just nods, accepting the compliment as if it were completely serious.

“I want to make you bleed even more.”

It’s not the words themselves that give Viktor pause but the way Yuuri says them. Voice pitched low, eyes half-lidded and the sweetest smile on his face – it’s like he’s trying to get Viktor into bed rather than mutilate him.

Viktor knows madness. He’s intimately familiar with its many variations. But there’s something about Yuuri that he’s never seen before and it doesn’t help that in this moment, every ounce of his insanity seems focused on Viktor and only Viktor. He’s shocked, confused and even a little worried.

But mostly, he’s flattered.

Five years of experience and a lifetime of agility is all that allows Viktor to leap out of the way of a particularly quick whip that comes for his neck. He escapes unscathed or so he thinks until the sudden weightlessness of his head sends him stumbling. He knows what he’s going to see when he turns around but the sight of his hair – the long, thick braid he’s nursed to existence like a precious child – lying desolate on the floor, stained by pinpricks of red that stand out like sores amidst the pearlescent silver, it…angers him.

The odd thing is that Yuuri looks as horrified as Viktor is trying not to be.

“I loved your hair,” Yuuri laments, pouting.

Viktor blinks and leaps at Yuuri, spear poised to strike.

He rarely misses.

But rarely is not the same as never.

Yuuri doesn’t duck out of the way so much as he floats to the side in one, sinuous motion that he can recognize as a softer version of his own style. Viktor dodges the whips that fly towards him in the same way, putting distance between the two of them to account for Yuuri’s longer reach.

“I really am sorry,” Yuuri says as if they both hadn’t just tried to turn each other into minced meat. “I wanted to cut your flesh, not your hair. You bleed so pretty, I can’t help myself.”

Viktor parts his lips to say something, anything, but all that comes out is a quiet gasp.

He’s used to hatred and he used to be used to adulation but Yuuri’s words and his _looks_ are both tinged by a volatile mix of both that leaves Viktor utterly stumped, silver tongue and sharp mind both deserting him in the face of this strange new creature.

No one has made him feel this way before. He doesn’t really know what to do.

So he settles on what he’s supposed to be doing anyway and attacks, sending sharp needles of his blood flying towards Yuuri with one forceful wave of his arm. He prefers not to use his blood as projectiles because that road always leads to crippling anemia but he’s out of sorts and _distracted_ , and he very desperately needs to catch Yuuri off guard.

It works, more or less. Yuuri slides away from danger but not before Viktor’s blood pierces his body. His right side – his blind side – takes the brunt of the damage but Yuuri only laughs it off, charging Viktor the next second.

It’s a dance after that, perhaps more violent than it typically would be but with all the grace and coordination that marks it as one. Viktor’s used to his movements giving him an edge in battle, a dancer’s agility and skater’s precision both turned into weapons that his enemies can never conquer. But Yuuri matches him with infuriating ease, plunging the two of them into a constant push-pull that is as exhilarating as it is dangerous.

The best and worst thing is that Yuuri keeps talking.

“I dream of you sometimes, of how it would feel to fight you and hurt you.”

A gentle caress at Viktor’s throat, leaving behind a shallow line weeping red above his metal collar. He swallows hard against the sudden dryness in his mouth.

“You’re beautiful so I want your death to be beautiful too. Nothing less is worthy of you.”

Tearing through Yuuri’s whips with a long spear, then leaping away before new ones can form.

Viktor finds it hard to breathe despite the fact that he’s barely exerted himself. It’s Yuuri and his damnable words; they’re doing this to him.

“I’m a little nervous, you know. Always had performance anxiety. I don’t want to disappoint you, see?”

Because Yuuri talks and Viktor listens and Viktor _feels_ , Viktor falls. Blood curls around his legs and lays him flat on the floor, more of that solid warmth climbing and twining around his body, immobilizing him with laughable ease. The whips are no longer sharp but more like rope as they twist around Viktor at the whim of their master, keeping him pinned in place.

And where his clothes are torn, he can feel the heat of Yuuri’s blood on his bare skin.

Viktor shudders.

Distantly, he is aware of the murmurs of their faceless spectators and the high-pitched drone of their commentator. It’s been going on all this time but Viktor couldn’t care less. He’s too busy straining his neck to catch a glimpse of Yuuri.

Yuuri, who’s making Viktor’s heartbeat thunder in his ears after _years_ of steady composure. Yuuri, who’s apparently dreamed of killing him and is now going to make that dream a reality. Viktor can’t even feel fear or disappointment because he’s too busy being lost in wonder.

Who _is_ this man?

And then he’s there, tight and gleaming black filling Viktor’s vision, followed by a heavy weight on his stomach as Yuuri straddles him smoothly.

“Eh?”

Up close, Yuuri’s lone eye is darker than it was yesterday, more brown than gold, the color too warm to suit the serrated smile that tilts Yuuri’s lips.

The thing is that Yuuri has a kind face and Viktor was fooled yesterday, not seeing that madness had long since eaten the kindness.

The thing is that Yuuri is a fool because Viktor can kill him so easily now that he’s so close but Viktor is an even bigger fool because he’s feeling alive again after so long and he can’t make it stop.

Real death is preferable to that.

But Yuuri doesn’t kill him.

Instead, he cups Viktor’s face with one slightly sweaty hand, caressing his cheek with tentative softness for a brief moment before the edge of a sharpened nail digs into the tender skin below his left eye and _presses_ , breaking skin and bringing pain as he strokes down to the edge of Viktor’s mouth. Yuuri smears Viktor’s lips with his own blood and smiles, slow and hot and satisfied.

“There,” he says, thumb still on Viktor’s mouth. “Not so perfect anymore. Maybe I can reach you after all.”

Viktor can’t breathe and there’s warmth on his face that’s not from his blood.

And when Yuuri rises and walks away from Viktor, the blood holding him down still firmly in place, all Viktor can think is about how his heart is still wildly racing in his chest like it wants to run after the man responsible for its predicament.

Viktor can empathize.

The arena is still loud with too many voices but Viktor is lost in the sting of pain all over his body, each one a gift from Yuuri. He wishes he could touch his face and taste the wound Yuuri left there.

Yuuri doesn’t kill Viktor.

For the first time in a long time, it’s a kindness.

 

* * *

 

They’re nice enough to patch him up before they strap him down to decide what will be taken from him.

Viktor looks around the room curiously, not that there’s much to look at. The only things of interest are the slot machine and the tray full of medical instruments. Viktor has been in this room only once before and has a jagged scar on his abdomen to prove it. He’s never sent anyone here either because Viktor always, always kills. He’s always thought he was being kind but now he’s glad that he’s here because-

It would have been a _crime_ if he had killed Yuuri.

And it would have been a crying shame if Yuuri had killed him.

This is better.

“Stop,” he says, half-wary and half-curious about the result.

It’s an eye.

Viktor remembers the patch covering Yuuri’s right eye and has to swallow laughter.

“Take the right one,” he says, and the man in front of him shrugs as if he couldn’t care less.

Viktor wonders if they’ll use anesthesia.

(No.)

Viktor wonders if Yuuri will be watching.

(Yes.)

 

* * *

 

_Viktor’s seventeen and on top of the world when everything goes to hell for the first time._

_Worlds had been in Saitama this year and Viktor had won, redeeming the lackluster showing of his senior debut at the GPF with a performance that left the crowd on their feet and a gold medal around his neck._

_He’s young and beautiful and happy and what better way to celebrate than to explore the lovely country that hosted his triumphant return._

_Yakov and Lilia both stay with him because neither really trust that Viktor can be left to his own devices which is offensive because the bar incident was_ just a one-off thing, really, Yakov, it won’t happen again-

_They leave him alone most of the time though and Viktor finds himself wandering the streets of Tokyo – he’d hopped over to the capital the day after Worlds wound up because he’s a complete tourist like that – while people stare at his long silver hair and bright blue eyes with ill-disguised wonder in their eyes._

_He’s used to the looks, enjoys them even, and makes sure to smile and wink at the strangers who either smile back or politely look away._

_It’s fun._

_It’s fun until the earth trembles and swallows them all._

 

* * *

 

_Viktor lives._

_Battered and bruised and hollow-eyed, he lives._

_Yakov and Lilia, who’d been in their hotel room when the roof came down on them, don’t._

_It’s Viktor’s fault and the first lives on his conscience. They won’t be the last or the worst but the funny thing is that as the years pass, they are the only ones who haunt him._

 

* * *

 

  _Viktor’s never thought of himself as a coward but his hands have been trembling since he got on the plane and his chest feels like there’s a sack of cement weighing it down._

_It’s been three years._

_Surely, he’s over it._

_He’d thought so but now he’s anything but sure._

_Tokyo is nothing like he remembers which makes sense because everything he’d seen the last time have long since been rubble, much like the lives of Viktor and others like him. It’s risen from the ashes like a phoenix and is once again bustling with life but it’s not the same._

_It’ll never be the same._

_He’s not sure if that’s a blessing or a curse._

_Last time, he had been here for a competition. But that’s not the case now and will never be again, not when the luck that kept Viktor’s life safe had not extended the same courtesy to his leg. It had been crushed and had healed but he would never again skate competitively._

_This time, he’s here for the memories. Nothing pleasant. Tokyo still only ever features in his worst nightmares._

_But Yakov and Lilia are here, a mere two among the thousands that perished that day. He’s here for them. He needs to pay his respects to the people who were more his parents than the ones who birthed him. He needs to not see their accusing faces in his dreams. He needs closure._

_He also needs to know if the way his blood twists into impossible shapes has something to do with this city that has already killed him once but that’s something Viktor doesn’t like to think about even when he’s not balanced on the edge of mind-numbing panic._

_He doesn’t really know where he should go though. There’s a memorial and mass graves but even the thought of stepping out of the airport and into the gaping maw of this towering tomb sends his heart racing, sweat beading on his skin._

_In the end, he makes it to the hotel and not any further because they come for him in black armor and lab coats and steals Viktor Nikiforov from the world for good._

_Later, he’ll realize that they were waiting for him, that they had seen his blood-work from three years ago._

_Later, he’ll realize that he’s expected to become a monster._

_Later, he’ll realize that he_ can _become that monster._

 

* * *

 

For an instant, Viktor thinks that it’s some unpleasant dream that’s woken him but the constricting weight on his body and the hands pinning his own down on the bed tell him otherwise.

He doesn’t need the light to know who it is.

“Hello, Yuuri.”

His mouth curves into a smile around the name. He wants to say it again and again, assure himself that this is real.

There’s a huff of breath that may have been laughter and then movement as Yuuri leans down low enough for Viktor to feel his breath on his face.

“Viktor.”

“Could you please turn on the light? The switch’s on the wall by my head. I’d like to see your face.”

He’s most certainly not lying. He has been constantly thinking of Yuuri these last couple of days even though said thoughts were a jumbled mess, at first from the pain of his newly hollow eye socket and then the medication that they’d been kind enough to provide _after_ they’d plucked his right eye out.

Yuuri complies, shifting his hold on Viktor’s wrists so that they’re confined in one hand rather than two. Viktor can probably break free if he tries but he’s quite comfortable, thank you.

The light blinks into existence, bright enough to hurt his eyes – _eye_ – and Viktor has to blink and squint a lot before he can make out Yuuri’s face hovering over his. It’s a very pretty face and the best sight to wake up to.

“Yuuri!” Viktor chirps, beaming. “I didn’t expect to see you here. How’d you get in? Are you here to kill me? I hope not but if you are, can you let me get to know you first, I’m really curious about – mmph!”

Yuuri’s palm is warm and firm where it presses against Viktor’s mouth. He wants to lick it.

“Do you always talk so much?” Yuuri asks though Viktor doesn’t know how he expects an answer with his hand still covering Viktor’s lips. So he just stares at Yuuri, noting that his glasses are back. His right eye is covered by a medical patch instead of the black one he’d worn in the Carnival arena and his hair is once again a delicate mess over his forehead. He looks more like the quiet, shrinking boy whom Viktor had so easily dismissed at first sight but the glint in his eye and the quirk of his mouth are one hundred percent the suave monster that had emerged from the deceptive shell.

“No,” he says when Yuuri removes his palm after a few seconds of intense staring. “But usually, I don’t feel much like talking. I want to talk to you though!”

And he _does_. Very much. His own enthusiasm might frighten him with how uncharacteristic it is but it’s hard to focus on that when Katsuki Yuuri is right here, straddling Victor in his own bed.

Hm. Now there’s an idea…

Yuuri’s mouth does an odd little twitch, his weight shifts and suddenly, he’s close enough for Viktor to see the fine hairs on his upper lip.

“We match now,” Yuuri whispers. Viktor is so mesmerized by the way Yuuri’s mouth shapes the words that it takes too long for their meaning to register. And when they do, Viktor nods enthusiastically.

“We do! I told him to take the right one so we would. I wasn’t sure if he’d listen but I’m glad he did.”

He beams at Yuuri. The expression sits oddly on his face but it’s…nice.

Yuuri doesn’t smile back which is a pity because Viktor really wants to see that again. He’d smiled a lot during their fight. They hadn’t been _nice_ smiles but Viktor’s smiles aren’t always nice either. Mostly, they’re fake. Sometimes, they’re cruel.

Viktor’s hands are abruptly released and he has barely a second to mourn the lost touch when a thumb strokes the skin under his bandages in a motion that’s reminiscent of what Yuuri had done in the arena when he traced a line of pain into Viktor’s skin. He braces for the same, oddly eager at the thought of matching cuts on both cheeks, but it doesn’t come. Yuuri just casually thumbs the place under where his right eye used to be. It aches.

“You didn’t answer before,” Viktor says, quieter than before. “Are you here to kill me?”

Yuuri slowly shakes his head and straightens up. He doesn’t move off Viktor though.

“If I wanted to kill you, I would have done so during the Corpse Carnival where I would have been lauded for it. I’m the first in years to beat their golden boy. They’d have liked it – a bloody finale to a bloody legend.”

Yuuri’s voice is softer now, calm and almost soothing in complete contrast to the manic energy that had preceded Viktor’s downfall.

“Aw, are you calling me a legend, Yuuri?”

“You are. A nightmarish one. You could have beaten me the other day but you were distracted. Why?”

It’s Viktor’s turn to be surprised. He had no idea that Yuuri – or anyone – had noticed. But there’s only one answer to this.

“Because of you of course. You came to me saying you loved me and hated me and wanted to kill me. No one’s ever told me things like that before, not in the way you did. And then you started fighting and you were moving like me but it was so beautiful. Of course I was distracted, Yuuri! You’re gorgeous.”

Yuuri just stares at Viktor, expression unreadable and lone eye hooded. It goes on for long enough that Viktor starts to squirm a little, gratified when Yuuri’s thighs immediately lock together to keep him in place. His hands come down to Viktor’s shoulders, not that firm but with the suggestion of force behind them.

“Be still,” Yuuri tells him, an absent-minded command that makes Viktor’s breath hitch in his throat. And then, “I could have _killed_ you.”

Yuuri emphasizes the word as if he thinks it should mean something to Viktor.

And honestly, it does. The very real prospect of Yuuri killing him had made – still makes – Viktor feel gloriously alive like he hasn’t experienced in forever. But something tells him that that’s not the reaction Yuuri is expecting. That’s a pity since Viktor really wants to give Yuuri what he wants.

Viktor’s used to that but it’s the first time that the target of his appeasement has a singular face.

“You could have,” Viktor agrees instead. “Why didn’t you? Why aren’t you? You said you wanted to.”

Viktor is actually willing to indulge his wish. But maybe… later? He wants to get to know Yuuri first, feels like it would be a great loss if he can’t. Yuuri said he’s not here to kill him so that means Viktor has a chance, right?

“I do. I want nothing more than for you to die by my hands, Viktor Nikiforov.”

And there it is, the sweet frenzy that had saturated Yuuri’s each word and action during their fight. It’s more muted now, evident only in a hitch of his breath and the darkening of his eye but it’s present all the same and Viktor has to swallow a moan.

“Then why am I still alive?” Viktor all but gasps. He strains against Yuuri’s grip on his shoulder and shudders when he feels it tighten almost painfully. He can happily stay like this forever.

“Well, I can’t kill you yet. I want to see you suffer more. Besides, there’s no point if I don’t beat you at your best. So next time,” Suddenly, Yuuri’s mouth is at his ear, softly brushing Viktor’s lobe as he says, “Don’t you dare hold back on me.”

Viktor is positively certain that he’s in love.

Surely, this must be it.

He can’t imagine any other name for the gaping, gnawing feeling in his chest, in his belly, in his head, threatening to burst forth from his lips in a litany of words that would make no sense but would all be some iteration of _yuuri yuuri yuuri yuuri_ and _kill_ and _fuck_ and _want_ and _help_ and **_yuuri_**.

Surely.

Viktor’s breathing hard by the time Yuuri pulls back to look at him. His face creases into an adorable frown as he takes in Viktor’s parted lips and the red of his ears. He doesn’t say anything though, just blinks a few times and shrugs it off.

“Well?” Yuuri asks, one sharp eyebrow rising.

“Okay!” Viktor agrees. Of course he agrees. Yuuri’s asking. “I won’t hold back. I’ll give you all I’ve got, Yuuri.”

 _That’s how I’ll show my love_ , he doesn’t say.

Yuuri nods, a small but satisfied smile on his lips.

“Alight then. I’ll leave you be now. You need your rest.”

Yuuri says that last part with an expression that says that he fully knows he interrupted said rest in the middle of the night in a manner that would give a lesser man a heart attack. But that’s fine. Viktor, even lacking an eye and a spleen and on pain meds, is not a lesser man. Yuuri can give him as many late night visits as he’d like.

“You don’t have to leave…” Viktor tries, deeming the tentative offer to be safer than blurting out everything that just passed through his head. Yet, Yuuri looks confused for a moment before his face lights up in understanding.

“Ah, Viktor. It’s fine, we’ll meet again. You can wait a while. After all, I’ve been waiting for months. Or years depending on how you look at it.”

He doesn’t really know but he can guess at what Yuuri means.

“So you did know me from before, back when…”

Yuuri nods, expression shuttered once again.

“I used to want to skate on the same ice as you. I was there that year to see you at Worlds. It was like a dream. And then…”

And then the Red Hole had happened and Viktor had become a freak and walked into a trap.

The sad thing is that things had only become worse afterwards. Well it used to be sad, now it just _is_.

“You were in Tokyo that day?”

Stupid question.

“Yes.”

Yuuri’s tone makes it clear that no further enquiries on the subject would be welcome.

“When did you get here?”

“A little over a year ago.”

Yuuri had been either a lucky one or a late bloomer. Viktor had been one of the first ones caught.

“That’s enough Q&A for today. I’ll be seeing you, Viktor.”

And with that, Yuuri slides off Viktor who most certainly does not pout at the loss and briskly walks towards the door with one last glance at Viktor’s prone form.

“Yuuri, wait!”

He’s half-afraid that Yuuri will ignore him but the other man stops, waiting without looking back.

“Can you look at me?”

“Why?”

“Please?”

Yuuri sighs, loud enough for Viktor to hear, and turns.

Viktor is reminded, for one uncomfortable moment, about the way he used to whine and plead and wheedle generally pester Yakov for both the silliest and most serious things and the way the old man would mutter and shout and sigh ( _Vitya you’ll make me lose all my hair you idiot boy_ -) but would indulge him anyway, smiling with his eyes the way he never did with his mouth.

Just for one moment.

It’s ridiculous anyway because this is nothing like it was then.

Only, it’s been years since Viktor’s used that tone on anyone. That’s all.

“Yuuri.” Viktor makes himself focus on the man before him. It’s not a hard task. “Yuuri, why do you want to kill me?”

Because you see, Viktor would let him, would even want it if Yuuri made it so but-

It’s clear that Yuuri’s feelings are more than the typical fear and loathing other Deadmen hold for Viktor. And he wants to know. Why? What did he do to make this boy who once loved Russia’s Pride Viktor Nikiforov hate the Kingfisher?

But Yuuri doesn’t tell him.

“You don’t need to know that,” he says. “Maybe one day but not now. Good night, Viktor.”

And then he’s gone and the room suddenly feels a lot emptier.

Viktor thinks that he can’t possibly sleep after this but his eye drifts close of its own accord. The last thing he sees before darkness takes over is Yuuri’s gaze boring into his soul.

 

* * *

 

  _The first time’s the worst._

_It’s what Yakov had told him a lifetime ago, when Viktor had been a tiny thing trembling with the nerves of competing for the first time, hyperaware of the crowd’s attention on him, its weight entirely unpleasant in a way the demanding focus in Lilia’s eyes or the quiet pride in Yakov’s shouts had never been._

_“The first time’s the worst,” Yakov had said in a rare moment of softness, one rough hand on Viktor’s shaking shoulders._

_He had been right._

_He still is._

_Viktor does little but stand and shudder and stumble as a woman twice his age plays with him like a cat with a squirming, helpless mouse. She feints and smiles when he flinches, carves red lines into his skin and laughs when he bites down screams._

_She enjoys herself and in the end, Viktor is broken and bleeding but alive._

_“I’d like to play with you again, pretty boy,” she tells him as he lies on the cold floor and pants through the pain. “So don’t go and die before that.”_

_Vulture, they call her. It’s apt._

_Much later, missing his spleen and also something far less tangible, Viktor decides that he’s grateful to her._

_She showed him that this was playing. A game._

_Viktor can play. Viktor can win._

_After all, he’s been winning games all his life._

 

* * *

 

 

_Vulture’s not his first kill, poetic as that might have been. Instead it’s another girl, younger but with a crazed light in her eyes that doesn’t fade until she’s a messy heap at Viktor’s feet. He looks into her dark eyes, blank and more peaceful in death than they had been in life, and thinks that he’s done her a kindness._

_He’s breathing hard and hurting everywhere, both of which are familiar sensations to Viktor who’s been breaking his body with enthusiasm since he was seven._

_But there’s also hot blood soaking his clothes and the stench of guts filling his nose and that’s as far from the cold embrace of the ice as it can get._

_“People who can be reborn as many times as necessary are the strong ones”, Lilia used to say with the unflinching authority of one who knew exactly what they were talking about._

_Viktor’s always liked those words._

_It’s time he took them to heart._

_This is it. His rebirth. His baptism by blood._

_Viktor Nikiforov is dead._

_Long live Viktor Nikiforov._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For those who are unfamiliar with Deadman Wonderland, I’ll give a brief explanation. The Great Tokyo Earthquake/Red Hole, a calamity that happened in April 4, 2014, gave certain people the ability to control their blood for reasons that will spoil the plot of Deadman Wonderland. 
> 
> In this, Yuuri and Viktor are both Deadmen, individuals possessing the Branch of Sin, i.e, the ability to manipulate their blood. Each Branch manifests in different ways. A certain sick shit decides to gather each of these Deadmen in a prison facility and hold deadly matches between them (called Corpse Carnival/Carnival Corpse) that are broadcasted to a select audience for profits. If one loses the match but manages to survive, they’re made to participate in a penalty game where a slot machine decides which body part they’re going to lose. 
> 
> There’s a lot more to it but this is probably enough to understand the fic. You can find more info at the series wiki [here.](http://deadmanwonderland.wikia.com/wiki/Deadman_Wonderland_Wiki)  
> Deadman!Viktor can turn his blood into spears and is currently undefeated in matches. Deadman!Yuuri’s blood becomes sharp whips and he’s got a fixation on Viktor that’s similar to but also entirely different from his canon feelings for the guy. 
> 
> As I said, I’m not following Yuri on Ice’s timeline here since Viktor is only 17 in 2014. The Red Hole incident happens on April 4, 2014. The 2014 World Figure Skating Championships was held from March 24 to 30 in Saitama. I’ve made it so that Viktor stayed to explore Japan for an extra week. Lilia and Yakov stay behind with him and it’s the worst decision of their lives.
> 
> I kept Viktor’s past vague because this would get real nasty real fast otherwise and turn into an angstfest. I’ll give a similarly vague account on how Yuuri came to be the way he is.
> 
>  


	2. taking what i want and call it mine (selfish, helpless, clinging)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Viktor finds himself seated on the floor with Yuuri at his back, the quiet snip-snip of scissors the only sound in the air as Yuuri cleans up the mess he himself made. Viktor’s not comfortable, not really, but his concern is less about having Yuuri at his back with a sharp weapon than about the way Yuuri’s soft fingers running through his hair leave sinful sensations in their wake.
> 
> Viktor wants those hands all over him.
> 
> He’s quite sure that attempted murder was not a turn on for him until last week but his world has tilted on its axis (again) since Yuuri came into it. He can’t put it into words why he’s feeling like this but for the first time in a long time, he has something other than the next kill to look forward to.
> 
> “Viktor, it’s done.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The fic title is from the song [Bleeding Love](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7_weSk0BonM) by Leona Lewis. Chapter 1 title is from [Gasoline](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xZ-m55K3FhQ) and chapter 2 title from [Hold Me Down](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sncDtok7LRE), both by Halsey. None of the songs have anything to do with the story though.

Losing an eye is a pain.

It’s literally a pain because the ache never goes away and Viktor can’t quite figure out if it’s just in his head or not. But it’s a pain otherwise too because his depth perception is off and his field of vision is shrunken and all of his carefully cultivated grace seems to have vanished into thin air.

Well, the last part is mostly because his mind wanders to Yuuri without warning at the most random moments and suddenly, Viktor’s tripping over his own feet.

It’s embarrassing.

It’s exhilarating.

But most of all, it’s confusing because Yuuri said he’d come back – alright not really but he had loudly implied it - but it’s been five whole days and now Viktor doesn’t really know what to do.

How exactly do you go about approaching someone who enthusiastically maimed you and also promised to kill you, all the while making your heart threaten to beat out of your chest because you’re absolutely enamored?

Viktor _needs_ to talk to that man.

So he decides to do what he’s been doing for a while – throw caution to the wind and figure it out as he goes. Granted, he’s only ever applied that tactic to analyzing other Deadmen’s fighting styles and figuring out the best way to kill them while making it flashy but how different can this be? Using it against Yuuri in battle may not have worked the way it was supposed to but the outcome is better than anything Viktor’s ever dreamed of so surely it’s the way to go. 

The day before their match, Viktor had run into Yuuri in the training room by chance rather than premeditation. So he has no idea where Yuuri’s room is but that’s really the least of his problems. It’s easy enough to find out. Most people here hate him but they’re also terrified of him.

It is something of a shock to know that Yuuri is housed on the same floor as him but only for how great a coincidence it is rather than Viktor’s ignorance regarding the matter. He hasn’t had concerns beyond himself for years. He can’t even remember the names of the last ten people he killed.

Viktor stands before room 415 for several long moments, shuffling his feet and tugging at his own cruelly sheared hair before taking a deep breath and knocking. Once.

He is absolutely not nervous about meeting the cute guy who has promised to kill him.      

He is Viktor Nikiforov, he knows no fear.

He jumps two feet into the air when the door opens and falls flat on his ass.  

Yuuri just looks down at him like Viktor has grown an extra head and maybe dog ears since the last time they talked.

“…Viktor?”

“Hello, Yuuri!”

He beams at the other from where he’s awkwardly sprawled on the floor. Yuuri looks taller from this angle.

“Why are you on the floor?”

“Ah. Well. I tripped? My vision’s only half what it used to be.”

Viktor cringes the moment the joke leaves his lips and the utter blankness of Yuuri’s expression is enough of an indication that he’s also unimpressed. In Viktor’s defense, it’s been a long time since he’s joked with anything that’s not his own reflection and that’s another bag of crazy right there.

After a long minute passes, Yuuri takes mercy on him.

“Would you like to come in? The floor’s more comfortable inside.”

Viktor’s already scrambling to get up and inside before he registers that _Yuuri joked back_. His smile grows impossibly wider.

Yuuri’s room is of the same size and shape as Viktor’s, which is no surprise since all their rooms are designed the same. It is noticeably blander though, all grey walls and greyer furnishings. Only the bed has some color, the sheets a beautiful royal blue. The flatscreen on the wall is turned off even though Viktor’s sure that a Corpse Carnival is being held soon. Maybe Yuuri’s like Viktor and prefers not to watch.

“I only watch you,” Yuuri says like he’s read Viktor’s mind. “Living it is bad enough, don’t you think? Or maybe not. You seem to enjoy this well enough.”

And Viktor knows he has no right to be hurt by that statement. It’s what everyone thinks of him. They call him a monster and it’s a well-deserved moniker. It makes sense for everyone to think that Viktor enjoys what he does. And he’s fine with that, really.

But Yuuri’s not everyone.

He’s special. That’s why Viktor’s here.

“I don’t,” he replies quietly, smile slipping off his face. “I just do what I have to. And I don’t watch either. I wouldn’t have been so caught off guard by you if I did.”

Yuuri, who’d been intently studying his own feet, raises his face at Viktor’s response, cocking his head to the side. There’s a frown on his face that Viktor wants to smooth away.

Speaking of his face, Yuuri once again looks like the nervous man Viktor had first seen. With a medical patch covering one eye, bundled in clothes a little too large for his frame and shifting with nervous energy, Yuuri looks every bit as harmless as Viktor had once thought him to be.

And what a glorious mistake that had been.

“Killing them is something you _have_ to do?” Yuuri asks after a long pause during which Viktor happily studies his face. It takes him a moment to understand what Yuuri is referring to. When he does, Viktor shrugs.

“It’s kinder, isn’t it?”

“Is it now.” It’s a toneless statement that makes Viktor brace for further explanations – and it’s strange, isn’t it, that he actually wants to tell Yuuri these things – but Yuuri doesn’t press, just waves Viktor towards his bed, the only appropriate seating place since the sole other piece of furniture in the room is a small desk adjacent to the bed.

It feels oddly but pleasantly intimate to sit down on Yuuri’s bed. Unfortunately, Yuuri doesn’t join in, choosing instead to stand opposite him, hunched and wary, the entirety of his attention focused on Viktor.

It’s a heady feeling.

“Why are you here, Viktor?”

He abruptly decides that he loves the way Yuuri says his name, his Japanese tongue caressing the sounds in all the wrong places but retaining something of the correct pronunciation. It’s entirely different from the way most people here mangle his name but it’s also nothing like the familiar way it had been used back home.

It’s something uniquely Yuuri.

“Viktor?”

There it was again!

Oh wait, Yuuri asked him a question.

“You didn’t come by again. I wanted to see you.”

Viktor beams at Yuuri again and is rewarded with a blush that colors the other’s nose and cheeks a light red. He looks adorable and Viktor can’t decide what he prefers, the deceptive innocence of the Yuuri in front of him or the fatal sensuality of the Yuuri who had fought him.

“Y-you… wanted to see me. After everything I did,” Yuuri squints at Viktor as if asking for confirmation and only seems more confused when he nods enthusiastically. “Huh? But _why_?”

“I told you already. I want to get to know you, Yuuri! You’re the most interesting person I’ve ever met. Do you know that most people would kill me without a second thought if they bested me like you did? But you held back even though you do want to kill me. How can I not be curious? Besides, it’s not like I’ve forgotten everything you told me when we fought. You said you loved me-” At this, Yuuri makes a little choked noise that Viktor gamely ignores. “-and hated me. No one’s told me things like that before. Of course I want to know you better.”

When he finishes, Yuuri’s sporting the same incredulous look he had on his face when he found Viktor on the floor at his door. There’s still a hint of red on his cheeks.

Yuuri huffs suddenly, shaking his head with the tiniest of smiles on his lips. He walks over to the bed and plops down beside Viktor, close enough for him to feel the heat of Yuuri’s body.

“We’ve had three encounters and I threatened you two of those times. Most people would try to stay away, Viktor.”

“I’m not most people,” Viktor points out, completely reasonable. “I don’t think you are either.”

A deep hum is the only response Yuuri gives and with no warning, there’s a hand in Viktor’s hair, roughly yanking his head to the side so that he’s looking right at Yuuri.

Viktor swallows hard when Yuuri’s other hand comes to trace the edges of his brand new eye-patch, deliberately resembling the one Yuuri had worn during the Carnival.

“It’s odd to see you with this.”

Viktor doesn’t respond verbally but it’s hard to not lean in to the soft touch. The firm grip on his hair is a nice contrast. Yuuri’s the first person to touch him like this in so, so long. Viktor wants him to never let go.

“It’s odd to see you with short hair too. I really am sorry about that.”

“It’s fine,” Viktor manages to say. “I was due for a change anyway.”

Yuuri raises a skeptical brow but doesn’t call Viktor out on his bullshit. Instead, he loosens his hold and strokes the fall of Viktor’s hair down to where it stops at his shoulders in a rough, uneven cut that hurts his pride every time he looks at the mirror. There’s not much he can do about it though, especially with his eyes as they are.

“You had such pretty hair too,” Yuuri sighs mournfully, tugging tightly at a strand. Viktor bites his lips against a sigh. “You’re still pretty though. Do you want me to trim it?”

Viktor’s too busy dying internally from Yuuri calling him pretty – it’s nothing he’s not known but _still_ – to pay due attention to the question.

“Eh?”

“Your hair,” Yuuri repeats patiently. “Do you want me to trim it? It’s a mess now and I’ve got enough practice cutting my own to turn it into something more orderly.”

“O-oh. Okay!”

And that’s how Viktor finds himself seated on the floor with Yuuri at his back, the quiet snip-snip of scissors the only sound in the air as Yuuri cleans up the mess he himself made. Viktor’s not comfortable, not really, but his concern is less about having Yuuri at his back with a sharp weapon than about the way Yuuri’s soft fingers running through his hair leave sinful sensations in their wake.

Viktor wants those hands all over him.

He’s quite sure that attempted murder was not a turn on for him until last week but his world has tilted on its axis (again) since Yuuri came into it. He can’t put it into words why he’s feeling like this but for the first time in a long time, he has something other than the next kill to look forward to.

“Viktor, it’s done.”

Yuuri gets up with one final run of his fingers through Viktor’s hair. Immediately, he misses the hands on him and the warmth at his back.

He reaches up to finger the edges of his newly cut hair as Yuuri moves to his desk and opens its drawer. He pulls out a small hand mirror that he passes to Viktor.

The face that stares back at him from the mirror shocks Viktor for the fraction of a second. He’s already more or less made peace with the loss of his luxurious hair but the haphazard mess left in its place had irritated him all the same. But now it’s different; shorter, neater and actually nice. It suits Viktor even as it draws attention to the long column of his neck and the collar encasing it.

“I like it,” he says after examining himself from all possible angles. Yuuri’s still by the open drawer but he’s looking intently at Viktor, one corner of his mouth tilted in what may be the beginnings of a smile. Viktor is mercilessly reminded of how much he wants to see Yuuri smile again.

“I’m glad,” Yuuri replies. He turns away from Viktor to stare into the drawer again, a faint frown forming. He bites his lips, white on pink, and Viktor watches, all thoughts of hair forgotten.

At least until Yuuri reaches into the drawer with a decisive nod and pulls out Viktor’s shorn braid.

He doesn’t know what kind of sound he makes but he’s pretty sure that it’s not attractive. It also makes Yuuri grimace and look down at his feet.

“Sorry,” he mumbles, thrusting the braid in Viktor’s direction. “Here. I picked this up after they took you away. Wasn’t sure how to give it back or if I should.”

Viktor mutely accepts the braid and looks at it for a long moment. The gleaming silver is stained here and there with drops of dark red. Dried blood. He looks up into Yuuri’s eye and then back at the braid.

He… doesn’t really know what to say.

“Thank you?” he tries and gets a grimmer grimace in response. “I mean, um. I’m surprised. Didn’t really think…”

Yuuri shrugs, pushing the drawer closed and using it as an excuse to turn away from Viktor. He doesn’t like that.

“Thank you, Yuuri,” Viktor says again, making the effort to inject some warmth into his voice. It’s easier than it should be. Yuuri makes him want to be nice. But then a thought occurs. “Wait, Yuuri, if you weren’t sure about returning this to me, were you going to just, uh, keep it?”

Though he can’t see Yuuri’s face, the sudden red on his ears answers Viktor before Yuuri even speaks.

“Yes.” And then defensively, “I told you I liked your hair, didn’t I?”

And that’s all Viktor can take before he practically falls over laughing, the braid slipping from his hands as they move to clutch at his sides. He knows it’s rude but he doesn’t care because Yuuri is just too _cute_.

By the time he regains his breath enough to straighten, Yuuri is glaring at him, offense written in every tense line of his very fine body.

“S-sorry! I’m not laughing at you.” Except he was and oops, Yuuri’s scowling now.

“Okay, maybe I was but it’s not mean-spirited. I just can’t believe that you’d keep my hair.” Viktor slides to his feet in a motion that he knows is smooth and sensuous and sidles up to Yuuri, leaning into his personal space. “I’m quite flattered, Yuuri.”

For a moment, Yuuri just continues to scowl at him. Then the expression relaxes into something less hostile but no less intense and all of a sudden, he’s all over Viktor, forehead to forehead, hands in his newly cut hair.

“You’re as fucked in the head as I am, aren’t you?” Yuuri asks, no, _purrs_ , and Viktor’s soul promptly leaves his body.

It takes an embarrassingly long time for the actual words to even register, a fact not helped by how Viktor can feel Yuuri’s breath on his lips.

“I-uh, I’m not…”

 _Crazy_ , is what Viktor wants to say because he is a fully functional human being, thank you.

But that doesn’t necessarily mean he’s not insane, does it? He’s pretty sure that sane people don’t count the days until they will die while trying to kill as many as they can in the meantime because they don’t really know what else to do.

Viktor is self-aware if nothing else.

“Well, they do call me a monster,” Viktor says instead, forcing a perfect smile. “And what was it that you called me? A bloody legend, yes?”

Yuuri doesn’t flinch or pull away. If anything, he presses more fully into Viktor so that their bodies are close together and Viktor has to bend his neck to keep their foreheads touching.

“It’s what you are,” Yuuri tells him but there’s no censure in his voice, no bitterness, only a strange and melancholic fondness. “Don’t worry though. I’m good at slaying monsters.”

 _Oh_. Viktor feels like he may have forgotten to breathe.

“But you’ll make me suffer before,” he manages to respond, barely recognizing his voice as the low, hoarse thing it has become.

Yuuri smiles. It’s not a pleasant one.

Viktor loves it.

“I will. Would you enjoy that?”

_Yes._

Every inch of Viktor is screaming.

“I think you’d give me little choice but to enjoy it, Yuuri.”

The man in question hums happily and steps back, a smaller smile still playing on his lips. Viktor feels devastatingly bereft without the closeness.

“Go back to you room, Viktor. I’m leaving to train.”

Viktor pouts but backs away obediently. A part of him wants to stay by Yuuri but a larger part wants to slow and down and process everything that’s happened in the last several minutes. Viktor had hopes when he made his way here but this is more than anything he had imagined.

Yuuri kept his _hair_.

He’s a little overwhelmed.

“Okay. See you later, Yuuri. Don’t keep me waiting like that again. Come visit.”

Yuuri doesn’t respond except to make a shooing gesture at Viktor. His hands are shaking.

Viktor pretends not to notice and turns away, heading for the door with reluctant steps. His hand is on the knob when Yuuri calls his name. He turns, eager.

“Yes?”

“You forgot something.”

Yuuri nods at the braid still on the floor.

Viktor tilts his head and summons his best flirtatious smile. He’s woefully out of practice but he can tell it’s worked when Yuuri’s eye widens behind his glasses.

“You can keep it, Y _uu_ ri. A little token. Think of me, yes?”

He throws in a wink for good measure and is rewarded with the bright blush on Yuuri’s face before he’s out the door and speed-walking to his own room.

In his chest, his heart pounds.

 

* * *

 

 

Viktor waits a week. Yuuri doesn’t come.

Viktor has to fight. He dominates his enemy and rather unfairly takes out his frustration on the woman. By the end, it’s not a body that remains so much as a mangled heap of limbs and organs.

He waits another day.

Yuuri still doesn’t come.

That’s the point where his already scant patience runs out and he books it to Yuuri’s room. This time, he doesn’t knock and just barges in, the unlocked door giving way easily. He makes sure to lock it behind him.

Yuuri’s on his bed, his back against the wall and a notebook open on his lap. His eye, wide and startled, is on Viktor where they should be.

“Yuuri!” Viktor whines, crossing his arms over his chest. He knows he’s being petulant but he doesn’t really care at the moment. “I _told_ you to come visit.”

Yuuri blinks at him before the open confusion on his face turns into something like amusement.

“Really? And why should I do what you say, hm, Viktor?”

He opens his mouth to respond and closes it when he realizes that he doesn’t have an answer to that. Of course Yuuri has no reason to do as Viktor wants. But still, after last time, Viktor had hoped that Yuuri would seek him out.

“You don’t,” Viktor says, dropping his hands. He doesn’t look away from Yuuri because that’s physically impossible. “I wanted you to though. Hoped you would.”

Yuuri’s gaze softens at that and Viktor feels pride well up in him for being able to spot it.

“I’m sorry, Viktor. It’s not that I didn’t want to. I just…couldn’t.”

“What do you mean? Why not?”

Yuuri shrugs, a strangely graceful motion that draws Viktor’s eye to his shoulders. They’re neither too broad nor too small; perfect for wrapping his arms around.

“I’m weird that way. Sorry.”

Yuuri pats the space on his bed in a clear invitation and Viktor wastes no time taking it up. His prior irritation all but vanishes at the sight of the gentle smile on Yuuri’s face and the soft sincerity of his words.

He doesn’t understand what Yuuri means but he’s got enough sense to know not to pry. Yet.

“I missed you, Yuuri.”

That gets him a startled glance and a widening smile, followed by a huff of laughter that’s rough and awkward but still makes Viktor want to bottle it up and swim in it.

“You barely know me,” Yuuri admonishes with absolutely zero fire. Then, “I missed you too. It’s strange.”

Viktor nods enthusiastically.

“I know. It’s been so long since I’ve had anyone to miss. I like it though.”

Yuuri smiles again as if to say that he likes it too.

“I saw your last Corpse Carnival. You were crueler than usual.”

It’s Viktor’s turn to shrug and he does so with a sheepish smile.

“I was frustrated.”

“Because of me.”

It’s not a question. Yuuri doesn’t say anything for a while and though his eye is on Viktor’s face, it feels like they’re staring right through him. Just when Viktor starts to consider the pros and cons of poking him on his cheek (cons – it’d be rude and Yuuri might whip him again; pros – he’d get to touch and Yuuri might whip him again), Yuuri blinks and visibly comes back to himself.

“I really am sorry I didn’t come to see you. Next time, you-um. You don’t need to wait. For me. Come around any time you like.”

Viktor couldn’t have stopped himself from wrapping Yuuri in a hug if he’d wanted to and the elbow to his stomach is well worth it.

Yuuri’s red down to his neck when he lets go and Viktor, a grown man, wants to squeal over him like he did when he was a teenager faced with the overwhelming power of puppies.

Speaking of puppies…

“That’s a cute dog you’re drawing,” Viktor says, nodding to the notebook still open on Yuuri’s lap. And it is indeed a cute dog, rendered in soft shades of grey with a pencil. It’s also oddly familiar. “Oh. It looks like the dog I used to have. His name was-”

“Makkachin,” Yuuri interrupts. “I know. You got him when you were sixteen. He was a poodle.”

It shouldn’t be as much of a shock as it is. After all, Viktor knows that Yuuri had known him before blood and death took over both their lives. He’d even deduced that Yuuri had been a fan.

None of that quite prepares him to hear Yuuri cite facts about his previous life with such nonchalant assurance. Even when the shock fades, Viktor doesn’t really know what to feel.

Thankfully, Yuuri speaks before Viktor has to.

“This isn’t him though. This is Vicchan. I got a toy poodle soon after you got Makkachin. I named him after you. Vicchan, short for Viktor. He’s probably still at my parent’s place, waiting for me to come home.”

“Oh.”

“I’m never going home.”

Viktor doesn’t confirm or deny that. He doesn’t need to. Neither of them is ever going anywhere.

“Makkachin must have forgotten me by now. It’s been five years after all. I’m sure someone’s taking care of him. How can they not? He’s an adorable dog.”

The words are familiar for all that he has never said them out loud. There had been nights in the beginning when Viktor cried himself to sleep, imagining wet doggy kisses and unconditional love that saw him through the darkest days of his life until life found a whole other level of darkness to shroud itself in. It could be wishful thinking. For all he knows, Makkachin’s dead.

But there are precious few things for Viktor to hold on to and this is one of them.

“Yes,” Yuuri says, voice soft. He’s looking at his notebook. “I’m sure that’s so.”

Viktor’s more grateful than he can voice for the agreement.

But the levity of earlier is gone, the topic of something so important from the lives they lost effectively killing it. Viktor turns his mind to Yuuri’s earlier words and tries to imagine his canine namesake.

A smaller Makkachin. Boundless energy and Viktor’s name. It makes him smile.

“Were you my fan, Yuuri?” Viktor asks even though he already knows the answer.

At first, it seems like Yuuri may not respond but then he sighs and closes the notebook, putting it aside.

“Haven’t I made that obvious enough? Yes, I was. Still am in a way. I never found anything as beautiful and inspiring as you on the ice and not for lack of looking. I tried and tried after you disappeared from the public eye. Never found anything even close until I was brought here and saw you make violence with your body the way you once made beauty.”

It’s a strangely poetic description and Viktor is flattered before he remembers something that’s plagued his thoughts ever since the night he woke up with Yuuri’s weight on him.

Yuuri loves him but he hates him. Yuuri wants to kill him.

Viktor can only imagine one reason why but he can’t make himself ask.

Instead, he says, “Aren’t you essentially saying that you find that violence as beautiful as my skating?”

Yuuri doesn’t look at him but he does lean closer to Viktor so that their arms are pressed together from shoulder to elbow.

“I suppose I am. You’ll always be beautiful, I think. And wanting to kill you is what keeps me going. So I suppose I’m biased.”

If that’s the case, then it’s the best case of bias Viktor has ever encountered. There’s an alien feeling in the pit of his stomach, something warm and tingling that makes Viktor press hard against Yuuri like a needy puppy.

Yuuri starts a little and then presses right back, even turning his head to better look at Viktor.

He wants him to never look away.

But there’s something he must know.

“Yuuri, why do you hate me?”

It’s reminiscent of a shutter falling over a window, the way Yuuri’s expression closes off so abruptly. He doesn’t look away or move back from Viktor but there’s a sudden stiffness to his body.

“You don’t have to answer,” Viktor adds quickly. “I just wanted to know. Since you already told me you loved me. I only-” He doesn’t mean to say it, not really, but the question slips out anyway. “It’s because of Worlds, isn’t it? You came to see me. And then you went to Tokyo. It’s my fault you’re a Deadman.”

Yuuri’s face is carefully non-expressive for one long moment before he bursts out laughing. It’s not humor that colors the sound but pure mockery.

Viktor waits.

“Oh my god,” Yuuri wheezes, head hung down and hands pressed to his chest. One of his elbows digs painfully into Viktor’s side but he’s loath to move away. “You have quite an imagination, don’t you?”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Viktor can’t help the way he bristles despite the solemnity he’d tried to maintain. Yuuri’s laughing at him and that’s annoying no matter how sweet it sounds.

“It means exactly what it means. Viktor, for all you know, I could have lived in Tokyo.”

“But – did you?”

“No. That’s not the point. I’m impressed you put that much thought into my words but no, you’re not the reason I was in Tokyo on the day of the earthquake. I was there with my ballet teacher, visiting her friends.”

Viktor knows without asking that that’s all Yuuri is willing to say on the subject. And he’s fine with that but despite what he said earlier, Viktor really does want to know why Yuuri hates him.

So he asks; one last try.

“Why then?”

Yuuri moves away from him and before Viktor can call him back, apologize and promise to shut up, Yuuri is shifting on the bed so that he’s sitting facing Viktor, tantalizingly close but still out of reach.

“You killed a boy I loved. I just want to return the favor.”

Viktor’s mind goes blank, his blood turns to ice and there’s a moment of nothingness when there are no thoughts, no feelings, no sight-

-and then Yuuri is right there, perched on Viktor’s lap with his face close enough for its lovely features to blur.

“You hurt me,” Yuuri tells him and Viktor’s breath hitches. “So I’ll hurt you.” Breath on his lips, hot and not enough. “Again and again.” Hands in his hair, fingers rough and grasping. “Until I’m satisfied.”

Yuuri kisses him and Viktor drowns in it.

 

* * *

 

In hindsight, he doesn’t really know how he makes it back to his room.

Everything’s hazy except for the sting on his lips from where Yuuri had bitten through the skin. Viktor knows he should let it heal but he can’t stop himself from worrying the spot between his teeth every few minutes and hissing at the way it makes heat pool in his belly.

Viktor _wants_.

They’d done nothing more than kiss, though it had been more of an attack with the way Yuuri tried to devour Viktor with lips and tongue and teeth. Viktor had been a willing feast, eager to be consumed so long as it kept Yuuri’s mouth on him.

He would have loved to die just like that but he imagines that’s the opposite of the suffering Yuuri wants to inflict on him.

In the end, it had been Yuuri who pulled away and pushed a dazed Viktor to the door, sending him off with one last peck on his cheek.

Then he’d made it back to his room without literally running into any of the patrolling guards. Somehow.

He can still taste Yuuri.

Even when the memory of _you killed a boy I loved_ rises, it’s pushed back to the depths of his mind by _Yuuri’s_ _teeth digging into his skin, his tongue tracing the roof of Viktor’s mouth, wet kisses and heady suction_ -

With a defeated groan, Viktor faceplants on his bed and raises himself up to his knees, one hand reaching down to cup himself while his mind replays images of Yuuri’s kiss-swollen lips.

 

* * *

 

_You killed a boy I loved._

Viktor doesn’t escape it for long.

It’s not guilt that he feels about Yuuri’s boy. Viktor doesn’t know who it is, can’t even begin to guess because he’s killed every one of his opponents except Yuuri and their names and faces are all just indistinct smudges in his memory.

He doesn’t feel guilty about the kill. There’s no point.

He does feel guilty because he thinks of his Yuuri loving another and is filled with nothing but visceral satisfaction that he died by Viktor’s hands.

He feels as if this knowledge will write itself across Viktor’s face the next time he looks Yuuri in the eye and so he hides, stays away from the one door that beckons him insistently even though all he wants to do is throw himself at the mercy of the beautiful man behind it.

Days come and go.

Viktor stays away.

Until one day, he catches wind of Yuuri’s next Corpse Carnival and finds himself in a trance in front of the single-purpose flatscreen he almost never uses, eye glued to the slick, black figure that stalks across the screen, cruel smiles and chilling laughter on its lips.

He can’t see the man that talked to him about dogs and gently cut his hair in this creature.

But he can see the man who flayed him open and held him down and promised him pain. He can see the man who kissed him.

The quiet man in glasses and the monster in black, two sides of the same coin.

Viktor can’t choose one over the other, loves them both vehemently.

Viktor manages to wait for all of one hour after the fight is over before the thrumming under his skin becomes too much and he has no choice but to slip out of his room and sprint over to Yuuri’s, seized with the need to see him.

He makes it to the door before the reason he stayed away in the first place crashes into him like a tidal wave.

He still lifts his hand to knock before letting it fall back to the side. He stares at the numbers on the door until they blur and afterwards, he drags himself back to his room, head bowed and a heavy weight on his chest.

He’s in his room and about to collapse in bed once again like he’s been doing a lot these days when the door bursts open and Yuuri glides inside in all his dark, blood-splattered glory.

Yuuri looks exactly like he had on Viktor’s screen, a divine vision in form-fitting spandex. There’s blood splatter on his cheek and on his bare arms but the inky color of his clothing hides any red that might be on them. His hair’s slicked back, his glasses are gone, and there’s a glint in his lone eye that wouldn’t be out of place on a wolf on the prowl.

He looks so wild like this.

Viktor’s entire body seems to throb.

“Y-Yuuri!”

He flinches at the way his voice rises into something high and panicked. He clears his throat and tries again.

“Yuuri, what are you doing here?”

Yuuri eschews answering in favor of turning away from Viktor and closing the floor, locking it for good measure. A part of Viktor is aware that he should be wary, that Yuuri is _dangerous_ , but the rest of him is hopelessly entranced by the man in front of him.

“Yuuri?”

“I saw you come to my door. I was outside at the time. I followed you here after.”

Yuuri’s facing him again, one hand on his cocked hip, gaze fixed on Viktor with overwhelming intensity. Viktor’s too busy drinking in the sight to parse his words until precious seconds have passed.

“Oh,” he exhales when they register. “Sorry about that. I…”

Viktor shrugs, out of words. It’s not like he could tell Yuuri why he was staying away when Yuuri not knowing the reason is the whole point.

“Is this about me not coming to you again? I did say you could visit me whenever you wished.” There’s something off about Yuuri’s voice, about his whole demeanor. The words sound the same as always, soft and bordering on timid but with an underlying firmness. But something about it doesn’t match the man looming in front of Viktor and the restless energy that seems to radiate from him.

Yuuri looks like there’s violence brimming under his skin and the softness of his words don’t match the heat in his gaze as he looks at Viktor.

 _That_. Viktor can work with that.

“Maybe,” he says slowly, quietly, sharpening his smile into something sickly-sweet and infuriating. “I wanted you to come to me.”

Yuuri’s face goes eerily blank for an instant and then that wild look is back, bigger and better. He’s raw and consuming from the clench of his fist to the predatory tilt of his head.

And Viktor’s the prey.

He wants nothing more.

Viktor lowers himself to his bed, leaning back on his hands and spreading his legs wide, deliberately provocative. He doesn’t miss the way Yuuri’s gaze traces his body from the curves of his thighs to the hollow of his throat with unhidden hunger.

“I watched you fight, Yuuri,” Viktor purrs. “You were so brutal out there, just like you were with me. You looked like you were enjoying yourself. Was it fun, flaying that man open until fell to his knees before you? More fun than it was to play with me?”

_I’d like to play with you again, pretty boy._

_Yuuri_ can play with him anytime.

Viktor eyes the new tension in Yuuri’s body, the careful stiffness with which he holds himself, almost as if it’s taking everything he has not to lunge at Viktor. That won’t do. Viktor wants him to let go.

He straightens and bends forward with elbows on knees, not once taking his eye off Yuuri. He trails a thumb across his own lips, humming as if in contemplation.

“Or could it be that I was the one there with you? Tell me, Yuuri, were you imagining me in his place, thinking of the ways you’d like to hurt me? I bet you were. You’re angry, aren’t you, that I didn’t come?”

Yuuri’s still a mystery in many ways but Viktor knows he didn’t imagine their connection.

He is obsessed with Yuuri.

But Yuuri is also obsessed with him.

“I’m glad I didn’t, Yuuri. You’re here because of it, here for me. You came to _me_ ,” Viktor finishes with another knifelike smirk, loving the way Yuuri’s face darkens with each passing word.

Viktor knows he’s succeeded when the next second finds him pressed to the bed with a grown man’s weight pinning him down. Yuuri’s face is inches from his.

“Bastard,” Yuuri hisses, harsh and forceful. “I know what you’re doing.”

Well, subtlety has never been Viktor’s strong suit. He doesn’t need it.

“And yet here you are, right where I want you.”

Yuuri’s mouth is one him before Viktor can blink, his wet tongue pushing past easily parted lips to lay claim to his mouth. Yuuri kisses like he wants to crawl inside Viktor and also pull him into himself; wet and hot and savage. Viktor opens up happily to his passion, both hands coming up to clutch at Yuuri’s back, fingers digging into clothed muscle. He wants him bare so that Viktor can sink his nails into Yuuri’s skin and leave marks of his own.

“Off,” he manages to gasp, tearing away from Yuuri and tugging at the collar of his catsuit. “Get this off and let me – _ah_.”

Viktor shouts when Yuuri ignores him in favor of biting at the delicate skin of his neck, sucking at a mouthful of flesh as it’s a particularly tasty lollipop. He’s not gentle about it, more teeth than suction, but Viktor arches into it anyway, all thoughts lost.

“One day,” Yuuri murmurs after he’s done with Viktor’s neck. His eye is one dark pool, more black than brown. “You’re going to bite off more than you can chew.”

Viktor doesn’t miss the irony of Yuuri saying that after _he_ bit Viktor but what he says out loud is, “I can take anything you throw at me.”

Yuuri just stares down at him, breathing hard and as turned on as Viktor is.

He makes an embarrassing sound when Yuuri unceremoniously slides off him but the other man just gives him a smug smirk before he sets about peeling off his clothes. Viktor’s transfixed by the contrast of pale skin against gleaming black and a hand reaches out of its own volition to help Yuuri out. But Yuuri just steps back with an impatient gesture at Viktor’s own clothes.

He’s sure that he’s never undressed so fast in his entire life.

By the time his briefs join the rest of his clothes on the floor, Yuuri is right in front of him, gloriously naked and obviously scarred.

They both are.

Viktor can’t help the way his gaze flickers down to the most prominent one on Yuuri, a long, clean line of raised flesh on his right side, stretching from under his ribs to his back.

For an instant, Viktor feels an old, cold anger rise in him but then Yuuri takes him by the shoulders and pushes him to the bed, and the anger is buried under the searing heat of anticipation.

Viktor scampers up the bed and splays himself on it, holding out both arms to Yuuri in clear invitation. Yuuri doesn’t keep him waiting, climbing on Viktor to straddle him, their half-hard cocks inches from each other.

He licks his lips, eye trailing from Yuuri’s dick to his face where amusement and desire fight for dominance.

“I take it you approve,” Yuuri tells him drily. There’s a bit of a rasp to his voice that sends fire licking down Viktor’s insides.

“Very much. You’re beautiful.”

Yuuri laughs, not amused so much as incredulous. His expression makes it clear that he doesn’t believe Viktor but Yuuri speaks again before he can try and remedy that disbelief.

“That would be you, Viktor.”

The way his face – and everything else – heats at that is ridiculous because Viktor knows what he looks like and how others look at him. But Yuuri is no random admirer whose compliments can be brushed away with a meaningless smile. It’s _Yuuri_.

In the end, Viktor gives up on words and reaches for Yuuri just as Yuuri raises one of his wrists to his mouth and bites.

Sheer habit has Viktor raising his own hand to his mouth but it’s caught in the hot coils of Yuuri’s blood before he can do anything, the other one seized in similar fashion. Viktor manages to register that it doesn’t hurt and that it’s because Yuuri’s blood whips currently don’t have the razor edges they have in battle before his hands are raised above his head and pinned there. He strains his neck to look up at them and sees one crimson tendril rise to twine itself into the bars of his headboard.

Yuuri just tied Viktor’s hands to the bed.

With his _blood_.

Viktor’s entire body shudders with enough force to make his teeth clack together.

Yuuri is still perched on him, breathing hard and flushed all over.

“Yuuri…”

“I don’t have much fine control when it’s not connected to me,” Yuuri tells him, raising his uninjured hand to stroke along the carefully controlled fluid binding Viktor’s arms. “But I want you like this.”

“ _Yuuri_.”

Viktor raises his hips, willing Yuuri to stop talking and start acting. They can discuss this impromptu bondage session afterwards.

But it seems that Yuuri has other ideas because all he does is shake his head and stroke the skin of Viktor’s bound arms, trailing his finger down, down, down along his biceps and underarms and then back up again, finally stopping at the center of the mark he sucked into the skin of Viktor’s neck. Yuuri exhales a shuddering breath and _presses_.

Pain shoots up Viktor’s nerves and he arches off the bed, a choked gasp on his lips.

“Viktor. God. I want to make you scream. I can’t be kind – I won’t. So tell me now if I should stop. I’ll leave, no hard feelings. Promise. Just tell me.”

For a moment, Viktor can only gape at Yuuri because exactly what in the last few minutes signaled that Viktor ever wanted him to stop? But Yuuri only returns his look with calm patience that doesn’t quite hide the yearning in him.

“Yuuri, I told you,” Viktor tells him, enunciating each word carefully. “I can take anything you throw at me. Any damn thing.”

Yuuri shivers just once, his eye fluttering closed as his lips part in a sigh. And then it becomes a fierce snarl and Yuuri’s on him, picking right where he left off with his mouth closing around Viktor’s pulse point and sucking like he wants to draw Viktor’s life right out.

Viktor would let him, oh god, he’d let him.

He tilts his head back as much as he can, chest heaving even though Yuuri has barely touched him. His erection is at full mast, begging for more than the teasing brushes of Yuuri’s skin.

But Yuuri seems more interested in mapping out Viktor’s skin with hands and lips. His fingers dig into his shoulders, holding Viktor down and keeping him still as Yuuri nips and licks and sucks along the curve of his neck, each mark a burning brand that sends heat pooling in Viktor’s gut and makes him gasp and groan and stutter out clumsy variations of Yuuri’s name. He curses his collar for the way it hides away precious inches of skin that Yuuri could have marked.

A fleeting kiss to his collarbone and then there are teeth closing around his nipple, biting gently and then none too gently at the sensitive bud so that Viktor’s squirming in his bindings and crying out, his voice a mangled, hoarse thing barely recognizable as his own. His other nipple is seized by clever fingers that pinch and tug, a blunt nail pressing to the tip, and Viktor lurches upward, mouth open in a silent gasp.

He’s thrashing and shouting under Yuuri’s ministrations, pinned down by bonds of blood and Yuuri’s own delicious weight, by the time Yuuri has his fill and raises his head. His lips are wet and red and there’s raw hunger on his face as he stares down at Viktor.

“So pretty,” he whispers and Viktor all but mewls at the praise, trying his best to lean into the hands still roaming his chest.

Yuuri pets him almost gently as his fingers trace nonsense patterns across Viktor’s chest and down his stomach, dipping lower and lower and stopping just above where Viktor desperately wants his touch.

“Yuuri! Touch me, Yuuri.”

“Should I? And how should I touch you, Viktor?”

Viktor just glares at him and thrusts his hips in answer. His cock bobs with the motion, hard and flushed and leaking.

But Yuuri just leers at the sight and moves backward so that he’s sitting comfily on Viktor’s legs, right above his knees. A lone finger prods at his balls, and ignoring Viktor’s pleading whimper, moves down to rub teasingly over the tight skin of his hole.

“Here? Should I open you up and fuck you until you can’t walk without feeling me carved into your body?”

Viktor’s brain goes utterly blank for one, infinite instant before his breath rushes out of him in a long, helpless whine.

“Yes. Yes, Yuuri, yes!”

Yuuri smiles, pleased, and takes his finger away, using it to lightly tap Viktor’s dick before he can muster up a protest.

“How about here though? I could take you into me instead, ride you until you’re too gone for words.”

His cock twitches at the words and Viktor’s mumbling agreements without even thinking of what he’s saying. His mind is torn between the image of Yuuri buried balls-deep in him and Yuuri stuffed full of his cock and he can’t choose, can’t do much but writhe against Yuuri, wanting and _wanting_.

And Yuuri – Yuuri laughs.

“God,” he says to the betrayed look that Viktor shoots him. “Look at you, desperate for me. I only ever imagined…” He reaches out to stroke Viktor’s cheek and he can’t help but lean into the touch. “To tell you the truth, Viktor, I wouldn’t last either way. I think I could come just watching you fall apart for me.”

Viktor’s dick throbs and he thinks that maybe _he’ll_ come just from hearing Yuuri talk.

But he doesn’t and Yuuri still won’t touch him where he needs it and Viktor is already trying to reach down and grab himself when the strain on his arms registers and he remembers – how exactly could he have forgotten? – that Yuuri has his hands tied, that he’s utterly at this cruel, cruel man’s mercy.

The sad thing is that even with the lustful haze in his mind, Viktor can’t bring himself to complain.

And he is most certainly not complaining about the way Yuuri arranges himself so that he’s bend over Viktor’s lower half, face tantalizingly close to where Viktor needs it. He’s a vision from heaven with his wicked grin and gleaming eyes and bitten red lips inches from Viktor’s aching dick.

“ _Please._ ”

Yuuri, of course, has other ideas.

“Patience, Viktor.”

“Y _uu_ ri, I ran out of that when you – _fuck_ , _Yuuri!_ ”

Yuuri has his teeth buried in Viktor’s inner thigh and familiar pain radiates through his whole being, the most exquisite kind of sting that leaves him frozen in limbo, incapable of drawing away and yet unable to push into it. Yuuri sucks hard once and lets go, a wet, filthy noise echoing in the room as the now bruised flesh comes free of its prison.

Viktor can barely hear it over the desperate sounds leaving his lips.

He pleads a lot. Yuuri ignores him.

Instead, he indulges himself in sucking bruises all along the tender skin of Viktor’s thighs, first the right and then the left, taking his sweet time as Viktor lies there and takes it all. His little sounds of satisfaction make something warm and too big curl in Viktor’s chest even as he’s all but sobbing for _more, more, Yuuri, please, Yuuri, I’ll-_

Viktor’s thighs are aching and probably red all over by the time Yuuri’s leaves them be and finally, _finally_ reaches for his cock.

A soft hand wraps around the base, Yuuri’s skin torturously cool against his heated length, and Viktor all but screams in relief. He shamelessly arches into the touch, babbling things that he can’t keep track of but probably calling Yuuri a sinful angel among other things.

And then he loses his voice altogether when lips touch the tip of his cock, his eye screwing shut as his body shudders violently at the sensation.

The mouth pulls back and Viktor calls out a plaintive denial before he can stop himself, left eye flashing open in shocked despair.

“ _Don’t,”_ Yuuri growls at Viktor, wild and beautiful in his fury. “Don’t take your eyes off me, Viktor.”

And Viktor nods and obeys when Yuuri resumes what he’d been doing. Viktor watches, gasping and transfixed, as Yuuri closes his pretty red lips over his cock and sucks.

That’s all it takes for Viktor to lose himself with a cry and come all over Yuuri’s face.

His orgasm sends Viktor crashing back into the sheets, head twisting violently to one side as he shakes and shouts his way through it. He closes his eye again in spite of Yuuri’s demand.

He’s heaving for breath when he comes down from his climax and it only takes an instant for reality to reassert itself. Viktor looks down, horrified, to find Yuuri sitting on his knees, Viktor’s seed and a supremely unimpressed look on his face.

Shit.

On one hand, it’s hot to see Yuuri like this, bare and sweaty and marked by Viktor’s pleasure.

On the other, Viktor wants the ground to open up and swallow him because fuck, that was _rude_.

“Viktor-”

“I’m sorry! Yuuri, I’m so sorry, I swear I didn’t mean to, it’s just that you looked so good and felt so good and I just-

Lost it. In fact, even thinking about it makes Viktor feel hot all over and if he’d been a younger man, his dick would be returning to life from just the memory.

“Sorry.”

Yuuri huffs and wipes some of the come from his face with his fingers, carelessly smearing it on Viktor’s sheets. He cocks his head and gives Viktor a look that takes what remains of his breath away.

“I suppose I can forgive you this once. It’s kinda flattering too. I still want to get off though. Mind if I borrow your body for a bit, Viktor?”

Yuuri drawls his name, looking like sex personified, and Viktor trips over words to comply.

“Yes, of course, yes, Yuuri. Anything you want, god-”

And then Yuuri’s covering him with his body, his lips are on Viktor’s, his cock is pressing into his abdomen and Viktor just opens his mouth and relaxes into the kiss as Yuuri grinds his rock hard dick into Viktor’s abs, over and over and _over_ , and comes on him with a keening moan muffled by Viktor’s lips.

In the end, Viktor’s still tied up, there’s a hot man on him, their come is cooling on each other’s skin, and really, it’s the best time Viktor’s had in years.

He can feel the grin threatening to split his face in two.

That’s when Yuuri starts shaking.

Viktor is too stunned to move for almost a minute, staring mutely at the man still hovering above him. Yuuri’s face is scrunched up and there are faint, pitiful noises coming from him.

The sensation of something wet on his arms is what jolts Viktor out of his shock. His hands wrap around Yuuri automatically and he notices that the bonds are gone. Instead, slick red stains his skin, the blood back to its natural state now that Yuuri’s control is gone.

Yuuri’s control…

Yuuri’s shaking harder, his face now pressed to Viktor’s chest. The sounds he’s making are muted but Viktor hears the distress in them loud and clear. He doesn’t know what to do.

He gathers Yuuri close and grips him tight but he _doesn’t know what to do_ , least of all when he feels his chest become wet from Yuuri’s tears.

He opens his mouth to speak and only an indiscernible sound comes out. He clears his throat and tries again.

“Yuuri? Yuuri, is something wrong? No, of course something’s wrong, sorry, what should I do – Yuuri? Please tell me how I can help you?”

Yuuri says nothing.

He’s still crying, still quaking and so Viktor just holds him and strokes his hair and tries to croon some nonsense platitudes before his voice breaks and he settles for pressing his mouth to the crown of Yuuri’s hair.

He waits.

It’s torture.

But slowly, eventually, Yuuri calms down. The tears stop and the terrible, heartbreaking noises also stop. His trembling loses its intensity until it no longer feels as if this beautiful man will fly apart in Viktor’s arms.

“Yuuri?”

“…I’m sorry,” is all Yuuri says, voice oddly flat. He raises his face and Viktor gets a brief glimpse of the reddened eyes and blotchy cheeks before Yuuri pushes away from his chest, slipping out of Viktor’s hold and all but teleporting to his clothes to pull them on.

Viktor panics.

“Please don’t leave!”

At first, there’s no reaction. Yuuri just keeps on dressing and Viktor can’t even make himself do the same because he’s on his knees on his bed, one hand reaching toward Yuuri as if to pull him back by the force of his desperation alone.

And then, after a long pause, Yuuri turns to him.

His features are utterly blank. He seems to stare through Viktor.

“Sorry,” he repeats, as inflectionless as before. It sounds so wrong and Viktor’s on his feet and in front of Yuuri before he can process his own actions.

“Don’t be,” he says as gently as he can, pushing his own confusion and fear to the back of his mind. That’s not what Yuuri needs right now. “There’s nothing to be sorry for. Please just tell me what’s wrong. Or – or don’t, not if you don’t want to. But don’t go away, not like this. Whatever you need from me, take it. I’m here. Just don’t–”

_Don’t go._

_Not again._

_I can’t_ –

“Yuuri. Please. I’m here for you.”

And he is.

He barely knows this man but what he does know is more than enough for Viktor to be sure that Yuuri is the best thing that’s happened to him in a very long time and he wants to protect that, protect Yuuri. For that, he’ll offer his silence or his ears or whatever else Yuuri needs.

“Do you…really mean that?” Yuuri asks after an eternity has passed. He’s staring at Viktor like he’s never seen him before.

“Yes. Every word, Yuuri.”

A quiet sigh and then, “I don’t understand you. I really don’t.”

Viktor has no response to that.

“You should get dressed, Viktor. And could you give me something to wipe myself with? I don’t want to have this conversation with come on my face.”

Viktor’s rushing to obey even before he realizes that this means they will be talking after all.

Soon enough, they’re both back in Viktor’s bed, perched on the side and looking far more respectable. Yuuri studiously avoids his eyes.

“If I – if I tell you something, will you promise to stay quiet and just listen until I’m done talking?”

Viktor nods quickly, seriously.

So Yuuri talks.

And Viktor listens.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This has got to be the longest single chapter I’ve ever written for a story. I usually stick with 3-5k chapters but Yuri on Ice seems intent on pushing that to 7-9k. Also, it’s been a while since I’ve written sex. I assume it shows.
> 
> The next two chapters are from Yuuri’s point of view.


	3. make me fall, make me bleed (take away everything i am)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Now, Yuuri loves him with astonishing simplicity. He loves Viktor’s smiles and his laughs and his screams. He loves the way Viktor pouts when Yuuri’s attention strays from him. He loves the way Viktor turns into a much younger creature whenever dogs are mentioned. He loves the way Viktor looks at Yuuri as if he’s something precious. He loves the deadly efficiency with which Viktor kills his opponents. He loves everything about Viktor, the good and the bad and the ugly.
> 
> He loves Viktor Nikiforov.
> 
> And he still wants to wrap his hands around Viktor’s slender throat and squeeze until those pretty lips that Yuuri’s kissed so many times gasp out their last breath. He wants to carve him up with liquid red until the beautiful blue eye Yuuri can spend forever gazing into darkens and empties with death. He wants to twine himself around all of Viktor and bite into him until he’s nothing but bones and blood that Yuuri can devour and keep within him forever.
> 
> He wants to kill Viktor Nikiforov.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Russian used taken from [ this wonderful, helpful post.](http://niedolia.tumblr.com/post/159347699876/russian-names-how-to-use-them-terms-of)
> 
> The chapter title is from the song Carnivore by Starset.
> 
> Warnings: No one ever told Viktor and Yuuri that murder fantasies are not foreplay.

_Yuuri’s twelve and a nobody when his world shifts on its axis for the first time._

_Viktor Nikiforov is a dream on the screen and Yuuri can see the universe in the silver fall of his hair and the rhythm of his limbs. He can’t take his eyes off and he wouldn’t even if he could so he looks and looks and wants._

_He wants to be Viktor, wants to dance on the ice like him, wants the grace of his feet for his own._

_He just_ wants _._

_And Yuuri’s many things, most of them unflattering, but lazy never has been one of them so he falls into the embrace of the ice with reckless abandon, his closest friend by his side, both of their movements clumsy echoes of the otherworldly creature they can’t get enough of._

_Skating has never been this fun._

_Yuuri knows it shows, in the smiles that come easier and the tears that do the opposite. He knows his family notices. Minako certainly does. She’s the one who gets him the ticket one year later, smiles and tears both coming as he thinks of Worlds and Viktor._

_It’s everything he’s imagined and more. Watching Viktor with his own eyes, Yuuri feels as if he’s ascended. He knows then that, more than anything, he wants to skate on the same ice as Viktor as his equal._

_It’s a lofty goal, the words bringing shame and guilt even with the confines of his own mind, and he resolves then and there to never utter them out loud._

_Still, he wants._

_Tokyo is Minako’s idea. She’s never one to waste an opportunity and Yuuri, high off the sight of Viktor and his skating, is willing to agree to anything she says, grateful beyond measure._

_And that’s his biggest regret._

 

* * *

 

_He’s twenty when they take him._

_The unnaturalness of his blood has been his dirtiest secret for years, closely guarded with a healthy blend of horror and terror. Not even the dreams – memories – of Minako, bent and bloody and gone, quite compares to the crippling fear that seizes him each time a wound, even the tiniest one, makes his blood weep out of his skin. It doesn’t always turn into whips that slice apart all they touch but sometimes, they do._

_And that’s enough._

_An attempted mugging, a blade sinking into Yuuri’s arm, the hot rush of blood –_ I don’t wanna die _– and before he knows it, there are three mangled bodies at his feet and murder on his hands._

_It doesn’t go unnoticed. They find him. They take him._

_He thanks the gods he’s not sure he believes in that his family wasn’t around to see it. Maybe they’ll never know. It’s for the best because he knows with ironclad certainty that he will never see them again._

_No one returns from Deadman Wonderland._

 

* * *

 

_Yuuri loses an eye and three toes on his left foot before he starts to fight back._

_The thing is – he wants to die._

_But no one seems willing to kill him. They call him many things – pathetic, powerless, weak, foolish – and his mind calls him truer things – murderer, trash, freak, monster – and he accepts it all, drowning in an ocean of guilt, and waits to be killed._

_No one does. For all that they cut him up and bleed him out, not one of the Deadmen deal the blissful final blow that would put Yuuri out of his misery._

_And then Minami happens._

_Minami who’s young, so young, barely more than a child. Minami who imprints on Yuuri like a duckling after one impulsive act of kindness and follows him around with one hand clutching his shirt, calling him Yuuri-nii and climbing into his bed at night as if Yuuri can chase away his nightmares when he can’t even deal with his own._

_But Yuuri doesn’t push him away. He can’t._

_And then Minami returns one night with one ear gone, bandages around his face and tears in his eyes, and something in Yuuri breaks._

_It may be fate or fortune that makes him face Minami’s first and last opponent in his next Carnival but Yuuri doesn’t care, doesn’t let himself care until the man is strewn across the floor in fleshy pieces._

_Yuuri vomits all over a severed hand but he doesn’t regret it._

_See, he needs to protect Minami. And he needs to survive to do it._

_So he will._

_Yuuri soon learns that to survive, he has to be brutal._

_He doesn’t kill if he can help it. But in this place, it’s often necessary. At least that’s what he tells himself even as the lines between necessity and cruelty blur after one moment of hesitation costs him a kidney and some precious remnants of his sanity._

_But Minami’s safe and mostly whole and still looks at Yuuri like he hung the stars and the moon so he must be doing something right._

 

* * *

 

_It’s not the smartest thing to do from a strategic viewpoint but Yuuri never watches the Carnival Corpse. They’re bad enough when he’s part of them and he has no desire to see his companions in abject misery tearing each other apart for the sick pleasure of faceless strangers._

_But then Minami has his second match and Yuuri has no choice but to watch._

_This is one place where Yuuri can’t protect him, where can only watch and pray._

_Parrot and Kingfisher, they say, the latter name provoking the kind of excitement that sends cold chills up Yuuri’s spine. The participants are revealed and Yuuri lets out a whimper at the sight of Minami on the stage, looking small and lost and every bit the child he is. Yuuri can still feel him in his arms, trembling with sobs that he tried to muffle into Yuuri’s chest._

_That was last night. He’d smiled at Yuuri this morning, a wavering little thing that spoke of both fear and hope._

_He’s a strong boy, his Minami._

_Yuuri looks at his opponent, fingers digging into palms, and all of a sudden, he’s twelve and innocent again, staring at a tiny screen as a fey boy with silver hair makes history on the ice._

_The screen is bigger and the boy a man but the hair, at least, is the same._

_Yuuri can die a thousand times and still not forget Viktor Nikiforov._

_Viktor Nikiforov, who was his childhood idol and then a fading star to mourn after the Red Hole, is here, a Deadman with blood as tainted as Yuuri’s. It’s like a dream, a nightmare worse than anything he can conceive._

_Yuuri sees the blank smile on Viktor’s face and wants to scream._

_Viktor and Minami. They’re-they can’t-_

_They do._

_And Yuuri does scream when the kid he came to love like a lifeline is pinned to the floor by where his heart should be._

_He screams for a long time, until something gives away and the grief turns to rage and violence wells in his blood and all that made Katsuki Yuuri burns away like the ashes of a dream._

 

* * *

 

Viktor Nikiforov looks surprisingly silly when he sleeps. His mouth is almost always open, drool gleams in thin lines down his chin and he makes strange faces and stranger noises. It’s ridiculous.

Yuuri loves it.

In a way, it makes him seem more real, more solid. It drives home the fact that he’s really here and the last couple of months aren’t some fever dream of Yuuri’s, some delirious result of having something else vital ripped out of him. Because no Viktor Yuuri dreamed up would ever drool in his sleep and he certainly wouldn’t clutch at Yuuri in the process like he’s his personal pillow. Yuuri’s dream Viktors have always been one of two things – an ethereal vision on the ice born of one glorious year of ardent admiration or a blank-faced monster born of another year of constant bloodbaths and bottomless despair.

It’s hard to reconcile both of those very true images with the man currently slumbering in Yuuri’s arms.

This Viktor has grabby hands and heart-shaped smiles and the impossible ability to make Yuuri feel utterly at peace.

It’s the strangest twist in his life which is saying something considering how many times it’s been turned on its head, first by a younger Viktor flying across the ice, then by an earthquake that shattered lives and then again by the repercussions of it that Yuuri is still experiencing and then one final time by Viktor in a place Yuuri never wanted to see him.

At least Yuuri hopes it’s the final time. He doesn’t think he can handle any more life-changing shocks. His mind is fragile enough as it is.

The strangest thing is that Yuuri does love him. At first, it had been the innocent worship of an impressionable young boy, one who’d loved the ice with naïve passion. Then, after Red Hole happened and Viktor disappeared from the world’s eyes, it had been distant longing, not even for Viktor himself but for the simpler, happier times where seeing his silver smile on the screen was the most exciting thing about Yuuri’s life. And about a year ago, when he saw Viktor again on a completely different kind of screen, it had become desperate obsession, a ravenous need to find and catch and _ruin_.

Now-

Now, Yuuri loves him with astonishing simplicity. He loves Viktor’s smiles and his laughs and his screams. He loves the way Viktor pouts when Yuuri’s attention strays from him. He loves the way Viktor turns into a much younger creature whenever dogs are mentioned. He loves the way Viktor looks at Yuuri as if he’s something precious. He loves the deadly efficiency with which Viktor kills his opponents. He loves everything about Viktor, the good and the bad and the ugly.

He loves Viktor Nikiforov.

And he still wants to wrap his hands around Viktor’s slender throat and squeeze until those pretty lips that Yuuri’s kissed so many times gasp out their last breath. He wants to carve him up with liquid red until the beautiful blue eye Yuuri can spend forever gazing into darkens and empties with death. He wants to twine himself around all of Viktor and bite into him until he’s nothing but bones and blood that Yuuri can devour and keep within him forever.

He wants to kill Viktor Nikiforov.

It’s quite a conundrum.

In his softer moments, Yuuri thinks he can let the desire to kill go. These usually come right after an attack that leaves him emotionally spent and physically useless as Viktor holds him close and whispers sweet nothings that Yuuri never hears but feels anyway. Viktor stays, always. And Yuuri falls a little more in love with him each time.

It’s almost a routine now, something Yuuri might never have imagined when he fell apart on Viktor – literally _on_ Viktor – that first time. It’d been hardly the most pleasant way to conclude the first time they had sex but Yuuri should have seen it coming, really. He can always make it through a battle safely, all his fear and disgust pushed to the back of his mind by the sheer, suffocating violence that thrums through his blood at the first stinging pain of a wound. Yuuri has _learned_ cruelty, has crafted into an art and a weapon both.

The fights are fine. Yuuri’s a survivor.

It’s afterwards, when the adrenaline high has worn off and reality stops being filtered by a veil of bloodlust, that the true horror hits and Yuuri breaks.

Until Viktor, Yuuri had just buried himself in bed and sobbed and screamed and shuddered until it was over and he was back in a mindset where he didn’t feel inclined to throw himself at the next Deadman’s Branch of Sin.

But Viktor had stayed even that first time. He’d held Yuuri and reached for him when he tried to run away, had looked as if he wanted nothing more than for Yuuri to not leave and so Yuuri hadn’t. He’d given Viktor a chance, told him things he’d never told anyone before and Viktor had listened and he’d told Yuuri-

_I’m sorry you have to go through that, Yuuri. I don’t know how or if I can help but would you let me try? Even if it’s just to hold you and be there for you. I meant what I said, Yuuri. Take what you need from me._

Heavy words to say to a man he’d only known for such a brief time and yet there had been nothing but sincerity in Viktor’s face and Yuuri had once again struggled to see in him the sharp-eyed man who had the most brutal reputation among them all.

Yuuri had believed him too.

And he’d thought, for the first time but not the last that maybe, maybe Viktor didn’t have to die.

But those thoughts never last and Yuuri’s hand itch even now as he lies with Viktor draped over him, the elegant lines of his body all but begging for Yuuri to sink his hands into it and tear it apart.

Yuuri thinks he no longer knows how to live for anything but Viktor’s death. It’s the one idea that’s kept him going for days and then weeks and then months and then a year. He doesn’t know who he is without that savage wish simmering at the back of his mind and occasionally clawing its way to the forefront.

Viktor knows.

It’s not like Yuuri’s made a secret of it. Hell, the first thing he’d done on seeing Viktor was word-vomit about his twisted feelings and then back it up with a thoroughly physical demonstration. He’d said it afterwards too, again and again as if to see whether it would really sink into Viktor’s easily distracted brain that for all their intimacy and merriment, Yuuri was still a man who intended to kill him.

And it seems to have done exactly that. Viktor _knows_.

He just doesn’t care, at least not in the way he should. Instead it’s almost like the knowledge fascinates him.

He confuses Yuuri, this man.

He enthralls him too.

Yuuri knows how this will end and he knows it won’t be pretty, not for him and certainly not for Viktor.

But the question is-

What happens afterwards?

What will Yuuri do?

Once the brutal beauty of Viktor Nikiforov is gone from this world, what will it mean for Yuuri who has spent precious years with image of this man branded into his brain?

He wonders that every day.

There’s never any answer.

 

* * *

 

There’s a certain reverence that Yuuri attaches to the idea of killing Viktor.

It’s a precious dream and dreaded goal both, something that Yuuri is almost afraid to imagine but can’t resist thinking about at least twice a day with a strange little flutter in his chest that’s eerily similar to what he used to feel when his feet came down hard on the ice in a perfect triple axel.

That’s why when Viktor asks a certain question with all the flippancy of enquiring after the weather, Yuuri falls of the bed and chokes on his own saliva.

“Yuuri, how would you kill me?

A minute later, Viktor is heartily thumping Yuuri on the back while he struggles not to die an ignoble death on the floor.

Viktor’s words are of concern but there’s mirth dancing in his gaze. Yuuri is not amused.

He doesn’t even understand where the question came from. They had been having a nice evening that was much like many others before it. Viktor spent more time in Yuuri’s room than his own nowadays and even joined him in the gym sometimes, the two of them working out side by side and ogling each other with no shame. Most evenings were spent reading, one of them in the other’s lap while the other recited out loud. Viktor had a lovely voice but he was not yet used to reading with just one eye so the task mostly fell to Yuuri who was happy to oblige even though his own voice was far from pleasing to his own years. Viktor insisted that it was nice though and Yuuri was finding that he was too weak to deny that man anything. And then came the nights which involved sex and sex and oh, more sex.

It was their routine and Yuuri was settling into it nicely, happy for once to embrace change.

Clearly, he’d become too complacent and forgotten that Viktor didn’t have a brain-to-mouth filter when it came to Yuuri and that it wouldn’t always be harmlessly cute.

“Excuse me, what?” he wheezes once the coughing dies down. Viktor mutely offers him a water bottle and Yuuri glares at him while taking slow sips to soothe his burning throat.

There’s a faint smile on Viktor’s lips and there is something severely wrong with the man (hey, pot, kettle here) because Yuuri’s glare has him abandoning all subtlety and sinking into full-blown laughter.

Yuuri wants to strangle him.

“Oh my god. Yuuri, your _face_.”

“Is this your way of asking for a demonstration, Vitya, because I really am in the mood to provide on right now.”

And really, Yuuri intends it as a joke. Even his irritation is hard to hold on to when confronted with the loveliness of Viktor lost to laughter but Yuuri realizes he’s made a mistake when the laughing abruptly stops and Viktor sits up straight and says-

“Yes.”

_“What do you mean yes?”_

Viktor has the nerve to grin, mouth shaping a soft-edged heart, as he leans forward and wraps himself around Yuuri who has half a mind to push him away but ends up pulling him closer instead because he’s a weak, weak man.

It shouldn’t be a surprise that Viktor is serious about this but it is, not because of the topic itself but because it’s _important_ to Yuuri and how can Viktor just ask him to demonstrate so…so casually?

It can’t be done.

“I’ve been really curious, Yuuri,” Viktor continues, as nonchalant as before. Yuuri tightens his hold in a warning that’s ignored. “You say you want to make me suffer but you never say how and I want to know! You’ve imagined it, haven’t you? Why can’t you tell me? Or better yet, show me? Just a teaser?”

Yuuri maintains his silence. He doesn’t really trust himself to speak right now.

But then Viktor goes on and makes him anyway because the damned man has a gift for needling Yuuri.

“Y _uu_ ri, if you’re going to be stubborn, I’m going to start guessing.” Yuuri can suddenly feel Viktor’s breath on his ear and his lips brush the lobe when he speaks again. “Hmm, maybe you’d choke me? Wrap your blood around my throat like you do my han-”

“ _No_.”

Yuuri winces at the loudness of his voice but he refuses to take it back. It’s a better option than listening to Viktor mangle his perfectly good fantasies with the ignorance he can’t help. As much as Viktor might adore and accept him, there are some things in Yuuri’s mind that no one but him can understand.

But clearly, Viktor is determined to try and Yuuri might as well give in because he knows Viktor won’t stop until he gets his way.

“I wouldn’t choke you,” Yuuri mumbles, not looking at Viktor though he can feel the force of his attention like a brand on his skin. “You-um.” He clears his throat, screws his eye shut and blurts out the rest. “You wouldn’t bleed that way. And I really like it when you bleed. So. No choking. I’d rather c-cut you.”

Yuuri kinda hates the way his voice goes all breathless at the end, excitement seeping into the words despite his best efforts.

There’s no response. He can’t even hear Viktor breathe.

Yuuri keeps his eye closed because he’s terrified of whatever expression is on Viktor’s face right now. It’s not like him to be so silent so surely that means Yuuri’s finally fucked up. It’s a miracle it’s taken this long considering the way their relationship began and Viktor might be accepting of Yuuri’s desire to kill him but no one would be content to just and sit and listen as-

“Oh, Yuuri.”

It’s barely a whisper but it halts Yuuris thoughts in their track and there are suddenly hands on his face, turning it towards Viktor. Yuuri has no choice but to open his eye.

He finds himself staring at a smile that can be politely described as manic.

“Uh, Vitya?”

“Tell me more!”

“What.”

“Well, you can’t just stop there. So you’d cut me. How? I want details, Yuuri!”

Yuuri feels a little faint. His whole body feels too hot. Maybe he’s coming down with something but no, Viktor makes him feel like this often but usually in a very different context.

“…Why?”

“What do you mean?”

And gods help Yuuri because Viktor sounds genuinely confused.

Yuuri pushes him off and backs away until he has room to breathe.

“Why would you ask something like that? Is this a test, Viktor? You know what I feel for you and we both know it’s fucked up. Do you really need to rub it in like this? Yes, I am obsessed with the idea of murdering you even though I love you. So much. It’s hard for me too. Don’t make it worse than it has to be. If you’re really bothered, then – then just end me before I can hurt you!”

Yuuri doesn’t realize his voice has been steadily building towards a shout until the final word reverberates around the room and makes him flinch. He’s mortified to feel tears slide down his cheeks.

Panting and wiping angrily at his face, he stares at Viktor whose gobsmacked expression would have been funny at any other time but this.

After a small infinity, Viktor speaks.

“Yuuri…is that what you thought I was doing?”

He sounds so gentle and so sad that Yuuri has to look away.

“What else?”

He knows Viktor has a strange interest in the idea of Yuuri killing him. But even then, Yuuri can’t bring himself to believe that Viktor actually wants to hear the thousand and one screwed up ways he stars in fantasies of Yuuri’s that make even the kinkiest sex they’ve had seem uncomplicated.

“Yuuri, do you remember when you said that I was as fucked in the head as you are?”

He looks up, makes it as far as Viktor’s collarbone before stopping.

“What does that have to do with anything?”

“Because you seem to think I’m not one hundred percent sincere in wanting to know how you’d like to kill me. It’s not like I’ve made it a secret how much I like the idea, you know. Before you, I spent years waiting in dread for the day someone better than me would come and kill me. And then you came and not only did you prove you could do exactly that but you also showed me that living in the mean time could be _fun_. You’ve made me the happiest I’ve ever been, Yuuri. I love living with you. Wouldn’t it make sense that I’d love dying by you as well? I’m not testing you or, god forbid, mocking you. I’ve wanted to ask this for ages but you seemed so uncomfortable going into details. You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to but Yuuri, _schast’ye moyo_ , please believe that I am as enamored of the idea of you killing me as you yourself seem to be.”

Somewhere in the course of that long speech, one of Viktor’s hands had migrated to Yuuri’s knee and Yuuri had managed to raise his gaze to meet Viktor head on.

The lone blue eye is wide with sincerity and even more breathtakingly beautiful than usual.

More tears slip out but for a wholly different reason this time.

“Really?”

Viktor smiles, soft and sweet.

“Really. I adore each and every part of you, Yura, including the worst of you.”

Yuuri takes the hand now stroking gentle circles across his knee on his own and presses a kiss to the knuckles.

“You too. I mean, it’s the same for me. The way I feel for you. I love all of you too. But it’s…hard to believe that you can feel the same. That’s why I blew up like that. Sorry.”

“It’s fine. This is how we grow, I think. Not that ours is a conventional relationship but that’s hardly our fault. And Yura, if I have to, I’ll spend the rest of what time we have left together to convince you of how much I love you.”

Yuuri blushes, giggles and very deliberately doesn’t think about how that time is dangerously limited by the reality of their hopeless situation.

“Okay. I’ll do the same,” he says, face still warm. And then, “You don’t call me Yura much.”

“It slips out sometimes but I prefer to use your name. I love the way it rolls of my tongue. Yuuri. _Yuuri_. Yuuuuuri. See? So lovely.”

Distantly, Yuuri wonders if it’s possible to die because you’re so full of fondness that you may burst. It’s not a bad way to go, he’s sure.

“So?” Viktor asks, sidling closer to Yuuri. “Will you tell me or shall we save it for another time? I understand if it’s too much.”

In spite of everything Viktor just said and the blatant honesty of his words, there’s a large part of Yuuri that wants to take the escape offered and put it off for another time. But there’s a different part, fainter but growing stronger by the minute, that wants to share the worst of himself with Viktor and rejoice in his acceptance.

“No. Let’s. I’ll tell you. But get off the floor first, the bed’s more comfortable.”

“Oooh,” Viktor coos but is up and on the bed in record time, sitting cross legged near the headboard, chin in hands and so visibly eager that Yuuri has to bite back laughter.

Yuuri considers Viktor for a moment and then throws caution to the wind and climbs into his lap, settling sideways across the other man so that he can conveniently hide his face in Viktor’s neck if everything becomes too much. Viktor gamely wraps his arms around Yuuri after a moment of tense surprise and nuzzles against his cheek.

It’s unfair, how a grown man can be so endearing.

Yuuri cups Viktor’s face with one hand, tracing one sharp cheekbone with his thumb. He’s beautiful and Yuuri loves that beauty.

He also undeniably wants to ruin it.

“I love your skin,” he begins, the words coming out smoother and softer than expected. “It’s so nice and pretty. It looks even prettier when painted red, you know? I still dream about the day we met sometimes. The way you looked on the floor, bleeding and bound. That’s when I decided I wanted to make you bleed even more. You were gorgeous. Breathtaking.”

Viktor’s pupil is blown wide by the end of it, heated black in a sea of blue. Yuuri leans in to press a kiss to trembling silver lashes and smiles at the pink that tinges Viktor’s cheeks.

So beautiful.

“I’d start slow. Small, shallow cuts all over your body. Beginning from _here_ -” He brushes his fingers along the broad expanse of Viktor’s shoulders, a teasing, tingling touch that makes the man shiver. “And going down, down, down until every inch of you is stained scarlet.” He curls his palm around the back of Viktor’s neck, his collar cool against his heated skin, and plays with the fine hairs on his nape in the way that never fails to make Viktor sigh and melt into the touch.”It’d hurt. It’d hurt a lot and for so long, Vitya. I think you might even cry. I bet you’d be lovely.”

It’s probably not physically possible for Viktor’s eyes to get any wider. He’s flushed down to his neck and breathing hard. He’s a mess.

Yuuri’s sure he’s not looking any better.

“You want to see me cry?” Viktor finally asks, sounding choked. His accent is thicker than ever, lending an exotic tint to the familiar syllables. Yuuri wants to bask in it.

Focus. Viktor asked him a question.

The answer’s easy though.

“Yeah. It’s only fair. You’ve seen me cry so many times, haven’t you?”

Viktor doesn’t protest but there’s a dazed look in his eye that makes Yuuri yank sharply at his hair, the look fading along with Viktor’s hiss of pain.

“Don’t go off in your own mind now, Vitya. I’m not done talking.”

“Of course, Yuuri.”

Viktor sounds a little wrecked. If Yuuri didn’t know better, he’d think this is foreplay.

But he does know better.

Right?

“Mmhm. Where was I now? I’d wait until you were delirious with pain, barely able to remember your own name. I’ll make you remember mine though. You’re not allowed to forget me. Ever.”

Viktor shakes his head, frantic.

“ _Never_ , Yuuri. What then? How would you end it?”

“What on earth makes you think I’ll end it so easily? I’d patch you up instead, Vitya. I’ll wait for you to heal and then I’ll do it again and again and again until you’re begging me to stop, begging for it to end. And maybe, if you’re really, really good, I’ll listen.”

This time, it’s Yuuri who shivers, caught up in his own words. He can see it so clearly in his mind. Viktor on his back, broken and begging, eyes on Yuuri and seeing nothing but him. It’s not even hard to imagine, not when he’s had Viktor exactly like that many times before, just in situations that involved different kinds of bodily fluids.

Under him, Viktor is all but panting, leaning forward to press his face to Yuuri’s chest.

Funny. Yuuri had thought that he’d be the one who wanted to hide. But instead of ashamed, he now feels empowered. He has Viktor Nikiforov right before him, a slave to his words and the violence they paint. It’s a heady kind of power.

“I won’t touch your face even at the end,” Yuuri whispers, low and worshipful right into Viktor’s ears. “I want to see it preserved even in death, even when I slit you throat and wash my hands in your blood. I want to see you eye lose its light, want to see myself reflected in it until your very last moment. I want to-I want to _be_ your death, Vitya. I want to take you from the world, once and forever, and I want you to _like_ it.”

Yuuri’s shaking now, fire flooding his veins and pooling in his gut, familiar sensations that has him clutching at Viktor who tightens his own arms around Yuuri and _moans_.

The sound goes straight to Yuuri’s dick.

He shifts experimentally and feels something quite distinct brush against his hips. Viktor keeps his face hidden.

“Vitya…are you hard?”

Yuuri hears a sound that wouldn’t be out of place on a dying dog. He swallows hard and talks past the telltale burn of his own face.

“It’s fine, you know. I’m hard too. I won’t judge.”

And Yuuri really can’t judge, not when that would make him the biggest hypocrite to ever have breathed.

Viktor raises his head, a pretty pout on his lips and the most delicious red shade spreading across his cheeks and nose. His remaining eye is darkened in a way that Yuuri has become quite familiar with these last months.

“I can’t believe this is how I react to you describing my own murder. I swear I’m not usually like this, Yuuri. But you just made it sound so, so…”

“Intimate,” Yuuri murmurs, brushing Viktor’s fringe out of his face. “Special.”

Viktor nods, sighing.

“Like love-making.”

“It would be something like that. I do love you, Vitya. I’d be loving you even when I’m killing you.”

There’s a smile on Viktor’s face that’s loving and tender and terribly inappropriate for their current conversation but it makes Yuuri all warm and light inside, makes him swell with pure adoration.

“Promise?” Viktor asks sweetly. There’s only one answer Yuuri can give.

“Of course, Vitya.”

The kiss that follows is a gentle thing, two pairs of lips moving softly against each other, smiling and tasting like they have all the time in the world. When they break away, Yuuri feels too big to fit into his skin. Viktor looks at him with naked awe on his face and that’s what pushes Yuuri into saying the words he would never have dreamed of uttering.

“I used to get off to fantasies of killing you. It felt wrong to think of you sexually but I was comfortable with thoughts of your death. And then one day, it just…escalated. I felt horribly guilty the first time but it still kept happening. So I just let it.”

There’s a moment of apprehension after the rushed confession but really, Yuuri should know by this point that Viktor never reacts as he should.

A delighted grin spreads over his face as he stares at Yuuri. There might as well be literal hearts in his eyes.

“Yuuuuri! That’s wonderful.”

“Actually, it’s crazy. I’m crazy. You’re crazy too.”

Viktor just shrugs as if he couldn’t care less.

“We knew that already. But it’s also really, really hot and can I blow you now?”

Yuuri, elegance incarnate that he is, sputters.

“Five minutes ago, you were embarrassed to be aroused!”

“But you chased away the embarrassment so thoroughly. Now I’m just horny and so are you.”

“Well, yes, but-”

“Y _uu_ ri, please let me suck you off. You can fuck me afterwards.”

This time, the noise that escapes Yuuri is a growl. His whole body is hot, lit from within a fire that has only one cure. Viktor.

Why does he even try to resist?

He moves off Viktor and arranges himself on the bed, leaning back against the headboard with his legs splayed wide.

“Well? Get on with it.”

Viktor is as eager as always, not that Yuuri’s really any better. Viktor kneels on the bed so that his face is poised over Yuuri’s tented pants. He looks up at Yuuri through his lashes and slowly, deliberately mouths over his clothed erection, the wet heat of him palpable even through two layers of fabric. Yuuri stares, transfixed by sight and touch both as Viktor licks and sucks messily at his cock, staining the cotton with saliva and driving Yuuri just a little insane.

“Take it off. I want to feel you, Vitya.”

Viktor smirks and does as told, Yuuri helpfully raising his hips so that Viktor can get his pants and underwear out of the way. He gets out of the bed to take his own clothes off as well and Yuuri uses that time to rid himself of his shirt. Viktor is gloriously bare when he crawls back into bed to hover over Yuuri, all firm muscle and silky skin.

Viktor wastes no time getting down to business, wrapping his mouth around Yuuri and sinking _down_ with an enviable ease that has Yuuri choking on a scream, fingers scrabbling at the sheets.

Sometimes, Viktor likes to tease, little licks and soft kisses that drive Yuuri mad with want, make him beg and curse and shout before finally grabbing Viktor by the hair and fucking into his throat, pulling out to come on his face that manages to look smug even when covered in Yuuri’s mess. This, though, is clearly not one of those times because Viktor just starts sucking like he’s trying to swallow Yuuri alive dick-first, all strong suction and throaty vibrations that sends Yuuri arching off the bed, mouth open in a silent plea.

He’s close embarrassingly fast and lets Viktor know in stuttered sentences only for him to ignore the warning and suck harder, one of his hands leaving Yuuri’s hips to grab his balls, massaging them gently, and sliding past to press two fingers teasingly against Yuuri’s hole. They push, just a little, the blunt edge of Viktor’s nail scratching his rim, and that’s what sends Yuuri over the edge.

His orgasm washes over him like a tidal wave, relentless and brutal, leaving him trembling and moaning in its wake. He comes down to see Viktor looming over him, mouth slick and swollen, curved in a smile that could bring the world to heel.

“Fuck.”

“Mm, yes,” Viktor agrees, bending to kiss Yuuri. He can taste himself in Viktor’s mouth and it’s headier than any drink. “But let’s let you recover first. Meanwhile, why don’t you get me ready?”

It says a lot about them both that Viktor can reach under the pillow and find a half-empty bottle of lube that he dumps on Yuuri’s chest before shifting back to straddle him with an expectant look on his face. It also says a lot about Deadman Wonderland that even lube and condom are readily available, one of the many luxuries that cost merely one’s willingness to dance with death on a regular basis.

“So demanding,” Yuuri grouches with no bite, grabbing the lube and making his boneless body cooperate so that he can sit up and press close to Viktor. He kisses him, deep and good until even the last hint of salty bitterness is gone and all he can taste is wet flesh and Viktor. He would be content to just do this until he’s hard again, would never ever get bored of Viktor’s mouth on his, but the beautiful man on his lap has other ideas.

Viktor pulls away, gaze hooded and intent on Yuuri, and takes the lube from his hand. Yuuri passively lets him open it, slather a generous amount on Yuuri’s fingers and guide it to his ass with a pointed raise of his eyebrow.

_Get on with it._

Yuuri smiles, knows it’s foolishly adoring.

“Impatient too,” he murmurs but wastes no time prodding at Viktor’s entrance with one finger. It slips in easily – there’s something to be said for regular practice – and Yuuri leans back a little to better watch Viktor’s face when Yuuri strokes into him in gentle motions. Sometimes, they rush this, mixes pain and pleasure in ways that get Viktor to make the loveliest of sounds, but that’s not what they need now. For all that their foreplay involved graphic descriptions of murder, the emotional turmoil that accompanied it warrants something softer.

Viktor’s mouth falls open with a barely audible sigh, eye fluttering closed as Yuuri adds another finger, moving them in and out in rhythmic thrusts while not once taking his eyes off his lover’s face.

Pale skin flushed pink and red lips trembling with soft cries; he’s a vision that would put gods to shame.

In spite of everything, Yuuri feels lucky that he gets to have this.

“Yuuri, _more_ ,” Viktor gasps out when fingers press fleetingly against his prostate. His ass clenches around Yuuri’s fingers, as needy as the faint whine in his voice. Yuuri obliges by adding another and it’s tighter now, snug and hot, and Viktor bites down hard on his own lips, breathing hard through his nose.

Yuuri can’t resist leaning and taking a bite of his own, dislodging Viktor’s teeth and drawing his abused lip into Yuuri’s mouth, nibbling on the tender flesh as he fucks three fingers in and out of Viktor with increasing speed. He’s hard again, cock aching to slide into Viktor where it belongs, but he doesn’t want to stop this just yet, not when he can feel each and every hitch of Viktor’s breath and hear his muffled whimpers when Yuuri brushes against that sensitive bundle of nerves. He has half a mind to make Viktor come like this but then Viktor shudders into their kiss and mewls out a broken _Please, Yuuri_ and well, stronger men than Yuuri would be hard-pressed to say no when Viktor begs so prettily.

He flips them so that Viktor’s spread out on the bed, silver hair a gleaming halo and a single blue orb burrowing into Yuuri, effortlessly, ethereally beautiful. Yuuri pushes into him, inch by agonizing inch, searing heat enveloping cock and stealing his breath. Viktor always feels so, so good, hot and tight and perfect, and Yuuri can stay buried in him for the rest of his life.

Under him, Viktor already looks close. His expression is twisted into one of breathless pleasure and his cock is leaking precum, gleaming with wetness.

Yuuri just stays as he is, feeling and seeing, surrounded by sensation and drowning in it.

“Move,” Viktor grits out, shooting Yuuri what might have been a glare if only it didn’t look so needy. “You’re killing me, Yuuri, _move_.”

He bends down to steal a kiss, just a brief brush of open mouths, before he shifts to bracket Viktor with his arms and fuck into him in long, slow strokes that grow faster and faster despite his best efforts. Viktor meets each thrust with his own, slamming his hips down, muscles tensing with each sinuous roll of his body. His cock, red and weeping and untouched, bounces against his stomach, begging for release.

Viktor’s hands abandon their death-grip on the sheets to clutch at Yuuri’s shoulders, digging harshly into the skin as he yanks him down. Yuuri goes willingly, their mouths meeting in a messy kiss that’s more tongue and breath than any measure of coordination. Viktor’s panting, cute little gasps on his lips each time Yuuri angles his thrusts to brush against his prostate. They’re both still more silent than usual but they make up for it in the way their gazes slide against each other and hold fast, brown and blue sinking into each other.

“Touch yourself,” Yuuri whispers against Viktor’s jaw. “Want to feel you come.” And Viktor swears in hushed Russian, ass tightening impossibly around Yuuri for a moment. One of his hands leaves Yuuri to reach down and take himself in hand. Yuuri adjusts himself so that he can watch; the sight of Viktor’s pale, thin hand moving over his flushed cock makes his own arousal flare even brighter. He rams into Viktor, the last vestiges of gentleness lost, and descends into a series of erratic thrusts that has them both moaning and grunting, the sounds mixing and melding into one filthy melody.

And then Viktor cries out and clamps down on him, squeezing his cock without mercy as he starts to come, thick ropes of white spilling into his own hands, staining his stomach and chest. Yuuri stares and stares, so lost in the sight of Viktor’s desire and the climbing burn of his own that he doesn’t notice his own climax hit him until there’s starbursts and fireworks in his vision, blurring out the blessed out face of the man under him.

Yuuri pushes into Viktor as deep as he can, spilling inside him in sharp pulses that pull ragged cries from his throat. After, he collapses on Viktor, softened and sensitive but unwilling to pull out when Viktor feels so warm and soft around him.

He feels fingers slide into his hair, nails scraping his scalp, and he raises his face with great difficulty to smile at Viktor whose mouth curves into that familiar, adored heart shape.

“Hey.”

“Hello.”

They’re grinning at each other like a couple of idiots, covered in come and sweat, and all Yuuri can think is _how’d I get this lucky_?

Then he remembers that he didn’t, not really. Viktor is a dream come true even if it’s radically different than twelve-year-old Yuuri’s hesitant fantasies of meeting his newfound idol on the ice as an equal. Even in this hell on earth, Viktor is the best thing that’s happened to him.

But that doesn’t mean Yuuri’s lucky. Neither of them is. It’s hard to forget the conversation that led them here after all.

He raises himself onto his elbows and gently pulls out of Viktor, kissing away his wince of discomfort and flopping to the bed beside him. Viktor turns so that he’s facing Yuuri. There’s still a smile on his face, so sweet it hurts to see.

They’ll need to wipe themselves down soon and maybe head to the communal bathroom for showers but that can wait just a bit.

“Is that really how you want to die, Vitya?” he asks after minutes of just basking in the sounds of the two of them breathing, peaceful and temporary.

Viktor doesn’t seem annoyed at Yuuri disturbing their post-coital bliss or rehashing this discussion. If anything, he looks understanding, thoughtful.

“It’s not that I want to die,” Viktor answers, slowly as if considering his words. “I never did. That’s why I fought so hard and kept fighting. But after a while, I realized that I wasn’t living anymore, just surviving because that’s all I knew how to do. That day, when it seemed like you were going to kill me, I thought for a moment that… I thought _I don’t want it to end here_. It was the first time in so long that I actively wanted to live. You gave me that, Yuuri. I still can’t tell you why but there’s something about you-”

Viktor tapers off, voice thick in his throat and eyes glassy. Yuuri reaches over to take his hand in his own, tangling their fingers together and squeezing in reassurance.

“I know.”

He does. He knows, he understands. It’s the same thing that had made him sit up and take notice nine years ago when he saw Viktor for the first time.

Viktor lifts their joined hands to press a wet kiss to Yuuri’s knuckles and continues speaking.

“If it were up to me, we’d be together until we’re both old and grey and surrounded by a hundred poodles. But that will never happen. Your own complicated feelings aside, I probably don’t have much longer. It’ll be a few years at best before somebody beats me and they won’t be as lenient as you even were that day. I would rather die in your arms than at the hands of some stranger. At least I know you’d do it with love.”

And Viktor sounds so calm, so sure that Yuuri has no choice to agree, nodding and kissing the man before him, blinking back tears that have no right to escape.

“Would you miss me when I’m gone, Yuuri?” Viktor asks to the space between their lips; there’s laughter in his voice but his eyes are dead serious.

“Every single second until the day I die,” Yuuri answers instantly, no hesitation because it’s the truth and it tears him apart.

It’s Viktor who kisses him this time, heartbreakingly tender, and Yuuri melts into him and carefully doesn’t think _What happens afterwards?_ and _What about me?_

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> schast’ye moyo: my joy
> 
> Yuuri himself never fully stopped skating but he also never pursued it competitively since even the thought of it was tainted with Viktor’s and Minako’s fates. It didn’t help that with Minako gone, there was really no one to encourage and push him to give it a try.
> 
> As for them not using condoms, it’s been a while since they’ve started sleeping together and they decided to do away with them because they’re sappy fucks who like the intimacy of feeling the other come inside.


	4. the cause and the antidote (the sinking ship i could not let go)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Do you want to leave?”
> 
> He regrets the words as soon as they’re out. Not an unusual impulse in itself and as always, Yuuri sticks to it even when he’s given an out. He’s not a coward though sometimes, he wishes he were.
> 
> “Huh?” Viktor asks, gaze wide and missing the point. “No. I mean, why would I want to leave? There’s no Yuuri in my room and the bed’s cold without you.”
> 
> Yuuri smiles in spite of himself but sobers up just as quickly.
> 
> “No, I meant, do you want to leave… me?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ok, I know this is late, sorry, I’ve been putting off editing this chapter forever. Here ya go.
> 
> The chapter title is from the song Dark On Me by Starset.

Viktor’s been acting oddly.

Two months or even one month ago, Yuuri wouldn’t have dared to assume what did or did not constitute as ‘odd’ for Viktor Nikiforov, not when each and every one of their interactions kept proving to Yuuri that the man he’d placed on a pedestal and later a hit list was nothing like he imagined him to be.

The real Viktor is _surprising_.

And Yuuri hates surprises but Viktor’s been the most pleasant of them.

Still, the point is that the Yuuri of now is not the Yuuri who gazed dumbstruck as Viktor steamrolled into his life and smashed his past Yuuri’s walls to nest inside of him. The Yuuri of now knows Viktor, thoroughly and intimately, and while he does not know all of him, he’s all too willing to admit that he wants nothing more than to spend what remains of their time together learning Viktor, his intricacies and foibles.

But he needs no further education to tell that the tense silences, thoughtful frowns and absent stares of the past few days are indicators of something seriously bothering the man he’s been sharing his limited existence with.

It has to do with Yuuri. Viktor is many things but he’s not subtle.

And though Yuuri’s not one to seek out confrontation, he can’t help the way the words slip out one night when Viktor spends just a little too long looking through Yuuri into something far beyond him.

“Do you want to leave?”

He regrets the words as soon as they’re out. Not an unusual impulse in itself and as always, Yuuri sticks to it even when he’s given an out. He’s not a coward though sometimes, he wishes he were.

“Huh?” Viktor asks, gaze wide and missing the point. “No. I mean, why would I want to leave? There’s no Yuuri in my room and the bed’s cold without you.”

Yuuri smiles in spite of himself but sobers up just as quickly.

“No, I meant, do you want to leave… me? Is that what you’ve been thinking about? I know you’ve been unhappy.”

It’s harder now that the words are uttered with deliberation but Yuuri forces them out anyway, hating the way his voice wavers at the end.

He can’t fathom Viktor leaving. He doesn’t even really think Viktor wants to leave. But he has to ask.

For a torturously long instant, Viktor just stares at him. And then he nearly sends them both to an inglorious death by tackling Yuuri and sending them tumbling off the bed. It’s not the first time this has happened. It’s a small, prison issue bed that’s not enough to contain Viktor’s and Yuuri’s…enthusiasm. There’s nothing quite like crashing to the floor _in flagrante delicto_.

At least both their dicks are in their pants this time.

“Why would you think that!” Viktor wails without waiting to catch his breath. Not that he needs to – Yuuri’s the one who took the brunt of the impact and is currently gaping like a fish.

“Hngh!” he manages to gasp. Viktor ignores him. He doesn’t get off Yuuri either.

“Of course I don’t want to leave you, Yuuri. I’m not unhappy with you. It’s the exact opposite and haven’t we had this conversation already?”

“Just checking,” Yuuri replies once he gets his breath back, reaching to wrap his arms around Viktor. He’s heavy but Yuuri doesn’t want him to move just yet. It’s strangely comforting to be pinned like this. “I still worry, sometimes. And you have been unhappy lately. Don’t think I can’t tell.”

Viktor looks _guilty_ at that which makes Yuuri rush to explain.

“I’m not saying you can’t be unhappy! I don’t want you to be, obviously, but you can feel whatever you want. Just…talk to me? I worry.”

He does. A lot. Story of his life, really.

Unfortunately, his clumsy attempt at assurance seems to be of no help because Viktor just looks even guiltier and Yuuri has no choice but to take one arm off Viktor’s back to cradle his cheek, stroking lightly over cheekbones sharp enough to cut diamond. Viktor immediately leans into the touch, closing his visible eye with a sigh.

Even with his face twisted into a pout-frown combo that would be extremely unflattering on anyone else, Viktor looks gorgeous and endearing. Yuuri still doesn’t like to see him that way.

“Viktor?”

“I’m sorry.”

“Me too. I don’t think I handled this all that gracefully. I just-”

He’s cut off when Viktor shakes his head almost violently and buries his face in Yuuri’s neck, dislodging his hand in the proceeds. He cards his fingers through Viktor’s hair instead, thumbing the soft silver strands.

“No, not that. I’m sorry about…”

Viktor sits up so suddenly that Yuuri lets out a startled gasp. He gets off and away from Yuuri in sudden, jerky motions and Yuuri’s left sprawled on the floor, confused and concerned.

“I am sorry about your lover.”

The words are said stiffly, the language stiflingly formal. He even bows.

Yuuri’s confusion skyrockets.

“Eh?”

Viktor rises but he doesn’t look at Yuuri as he hauls himself upright, absently wondering why so many of their important conversations start out on the floor. And this will be one like that, he’s certain. The look on Viktor’s face, part sadness, part anger, assures him of that.

“Viktor, _you_ are my lover.”

Viktor just frowns, eye flicking briefly up to Yuuri before he looks down again. Yuuri wants to go to him but something keeps him rooted to his spot.

“No,” Viktor says softly and Yuuri swears his heart stops but then Viktor continues, “I meant your old lover. The one I killed.”

In the pregnant silence following that statement, all Yuuri can think is _Huh?_

Then it hits him.

“His name was Minami Kenjirou,” Yuuri says before his brain can catch up to the words. “And he wasn’t my lover.”

Minami had been a kid. The thought is faintly nauseating.

Viktor, though, looks stricken as if Yuuri just told him that _no, darling, the sun doesn’t really rise in the east._

“He’s not? But you said...”

This topic is uncomfortable. It had been bad enough the first time and Yuuri still feels residual shame over the way he’d followed up the confession with a kiss, the way he’d licked deep and filthy into Viktor’s mouth as if trying to drown the happy boy’s laughter ringing in his head with Viktor’s sweet moans. It had been either kiss or kill in that moment; the wet heat of Viktor had helped calm the violence that brimmed under his hands and made them itch to wrap around Viktor’s slender throat and squeeze until it gave away.

Yuuri can feel the same need rising up now; his fingers twitch against his leg and all he can think about is the way Viktor’s milk-white skin bruises so easy, so pretty.

He had been doing so well recently. Visions of Viktor horrified and bleeding had been replaced by heart-shaped smiles and lust-dark eyes, images born from memory rather than fantasy. His love for Viktor’s laughter had all but buried the need to make him scream.

Now it’s all rushing back and it’s all Yuuri can do to hold himself in place and _breathe_.

He loves Viktor.

He wants to hurt Viktor.

But not now, not like this.

Viktor might enjoy it when Yuuri gets rough during sex but the way he feels now, this bloodlust singing in his veins… it’s not something Yuuri wants to expose Viktor to, not when it’s something they can’t ever come back from.

Minami. Still and hollow-eyed at Viktor’s feet. Shrill screams. His own. 

It’s not about revenge.

Yuuri would never have touched Viktor with desire or love if that were the case.

It’s about desperation and the will to survive; a crutch in the shape of a silver-haired man with empty smiles that begged to be broken.

See, Yuuri _is_ a monster.

“-ri? Yuuri! You’re shaking. Please, talk to me?”

He doesn’t even register that he’s moving until he’s got Viktor pinned to the bed, legs dangling over the edge and lone eye wide because Yuuri’s got his arms around his throat.

Fuck.

This is exactly what he had been trying to avoid.

Yuuri tries to take his hands away but the best he manages is to loosen his grip so that they lie in a loose hold. The skin under them is already a little red. Yuuri knows it’ll bruise.

“I’m sorry,” Yuuri says and it feels like someone else is speaking. The words ring in his ears, loud and hollow.

“You’re not,” Viktor whispers. There’s something curious in his voice that Yuuri doesn’t have the mental faculties to examine at the moment.

“You shouldn’t have brought him up.” It’s not that Yuuri’s blaming Viktor for the freakshow in his own head. Viktor doesn’t know. Yuuri thinks he’s about to find out. His thumb presses into Viktor’s Adam’s apple, feels it move under his touch. He watches, fascinated, like it’s someone else’s hands that still lie snug around his lover’s throat.

“I’ve been wanting to since you mentioned him. You called him the boy you loved. I was just scared to, before now.”

“This is what’s been eating at you?”

It says something about the two of them that they can converse so casually in this position.

Viktor’s silent for a while, staring intently at Yuuri, blue eye hooded and uncertain. It’s only when he relaxes into the bed, going limp and pliant under Yuuri, that he even notices the tension that had been in his frame.

“Yes,” Viktor finally says. His voice is a little too quiet. “I was feeling so guilty.”

Yuuri doesn’t try to stop the bark of unamused laughter that leaves him. His hands clench around Viktor for an instant before he forces them to loosen. This position is precarious but Yuuri can’t make himself change it and Viktor seems content to be caught and held. Nothing new there.

“You’re guilty? Do you even remember who he is? Minami Kenjirou, Rooster. Does his name trigger a face in your mind?” Yuuri waits but Viktor just stares up at him with an infuriatingly guileless expression. So much for guilt. “Of course not. What right do you have to feel guilt, Viktor Nikiforov, when you don’t even know what you’re guilty of?”

Viktor’s eye flutter shut and his mouth twists into a grimace, only to smoothen out the next instant into an expression Yuuri knows to be Viktor’s version of reckless determination. It’s not the first time it’s been directed at Yuuri.

He feels something that may be dread or excitement or both coil in his gut.

“I didn’t feel guilty about him,” Viktor tells him. There’s a manic tinge to his voice. “I thought he was your lover and when I imagined you loving someone other than me… I was happy I was the one to kill him.”

Yuuri can do is stare at the man under him, blank and uncomprehending.

“He wasn’t my lover,” he repeats automatically. His mind is a swirl of chaos. His hands are too tense.

“I know – _ah_ , Yuuri!”

It’s a pained gasp and Yuuri directs his eye to where his hands encircle Viktor’s throat. His nails, kept slightly long and sharp, are digging into the tender flesh just above his collar, pinpricks of red seeping out from under them.

“Oh, you’re bleeding.”

Yuuri doesn’t take his hands away or lighten the pressure. Viktor doesn’t try to buck him off or weaponize the oozing blood.

Fools, the both of them.

“Why did you tell me that, Vitya?” Yuuri wonders how twisted it is that he can feel affection for this man even in the wake of recent revelations. “You knew I wouldn’t be pleased.”

There are tendrils of watery blood trickling to the sheets below them. Viktor’s face is flushed.

It’s a good look on him.

“I had to get it off my chest,” Viktor answers but Yuuri can hear the undertone of something darker in his words. He waits and Viktor delivers. “And I wanted to know what you’d do when I told you my feelings.”

Ah.

Sometimes, Yuuri forgets.

He’s not the only monster in this room.

“Do you feel anything at all for anyone that’s not me?”

And Viktor – Viktor laughs, high and carefree, and wraps his arms around Yuuri’s wrists, not tugging them away from Viktor’s broken skin, just holding them, gently, firmly. A willing prisoner and all the more dangerous for it.

“Of course I don’t. Isn’t that obvious? You don’t either, do you? For all that you don’t kill as much as I do, you don’t care either. You didn’t care for that boy either. How can you, when you’re here with me now, all _mine_?”

Yuuri leans down to shut him up with his mouth. It’s not a kiss but a bite, Viktor’s plumb bottom lip caught between teeth that clamp down hard until the taste of rust floods his tongue. Viktor groans when Yuuri laps at the blood, squirming a little without trying to get away. He’s heavy-lidded and blushing when Yuuri pulls away and he feels a sudden, visceral hatred for the black patch that covers Viktor’s right eye, marring the perfection of his visage.

But then, even that is Yuuri’s mark on him, isn’t it?

“I did love him,” Yuuri says, voice sure because it’s not really a lie. “I loved him the same way I loved you before I met you.”

And oh, there it is, the flare of fury in Viktor’s face, blatant displeasure at the comparison. Yuuri allows himself a tiny smirk that only widens when Viktor’s gaze morphs into a glare.

It’s been a while since they’ve played this game. There’s been no need once Yuuri’s passion cooled into affection and Viktor found his own balance in his emotions.

“A crutch,” Yuuri tells him. Far back in his mind, there’s a frisson of fear at the unpleasant truths leaving his lips. They’re truths Yuuri has come to terms with a long time ago, after self-deception failed him one too many times and left him a wreck of a man. But he’s never had to say them to another. Before Viktor, there was no one to listen, no one Yuuri wanted to listen. But it’s fine, isn’t it? Viktor has already seen the worst of him. “I needed something to keep me going. A purpose to leave the bed every morning, train till my body ached and muscles swelled, and fight until I was the one to come out on top. Protecting him and killing you. They kept me alive.”

Viktor’s eye is wide with something like wonder, his jaw slack and stained with the blood from his lips.

There are times when Yuuri wonders if he’s trying to prod Viktor into something drastic by making him bleed so much. Not that it matters – Viktor never takes the chance. He never will.

“Oh,” Viktor breathes. “I don’t like being a replacement. But if it helped you survive, my Yuuri, then fine. It’s fine. I can never begrudge something that helped you live.”

“You’re no replacement. Even back then, you were…special. You have been from the moment I saw you. The roles changed, that’s all.”

“And now?”

“Now you’re mine and I’m yours. Simple as that.”

“That’ll never change.”

It’s not a question but there’s a look in Viktor’s eye that compels Yuuri to answer. He understands insecurities.

“No, never.”

They kiss, Yuuri’s hand finally leaving Viktor’s neck to frame his face, holding him gently as their lips move together with syrupy sweetness. It’s not the way Yuuri had expected this episode to end but Viktor has always surprised him. And with him, Yuuri surprises himself too.

And it’s freeing, in a way, to have it all out in the open.

Even if-

The thought of killing Viktor used to be his crutch. Is it still?

Moments of violent thoughts aside, does Yuuri want it anymore?

Viktor doesn’t notice, doesn’t ask.

In a way, Yuuri is thankful because he doesn’t know the answers himself.

He pulls away from the kiss before his distraction becomes too obvious. Viktor is smiling under him, angelic despite the blood painting his skin. Yuuri’s own beautiful fallen angel.

He loves this man.

“Let’s get you cleaned up,” Yuuri says, pressing a quick kiss to Viktor’s forehead. A half-sincere apology.

Viktor giggles happily and follows Yuuri out of the bed, and all is well.

For now.

 

* * *

 

The breaking point comes amidst a storm of sheer fury and scathing jealousy.

Viktor is both beloved and reviled in Deadman Wonderland. The twisted minds that see their struggle for survival as sport adore him and his flashy, deadly displays that never fail to leave his opponent ruined beyond help. The other inmates fear the way his moniker is a death sentence and hate him for the skilled violence that can’t be suppressed or surpassed.

For months, Yuuri had watched from beyond a screen as Viktor spilled blood and life with careful, graceful flicks of his hands, as he smiled and waved with empty smiles and emptier eyes. He had seen, easily, both the love and the hate, had felt it himself in all its contradictory glory.

And then he’d really met Viktor and he’d had been nothing like Yuuri imagined. A little silly, a lot pushy and with a single eye that glimmered with something sweeter than the dead cheer Yuuri had become used to seeing.

Beautiful, terrible and _his_.

Yuuri’s Viktor.

Yuuri’s Viktor kills without mercy and calls it kindness, he’s a man whom life made a monster, and he’s as deserving of death and pain as Yuuri himself is.

But the thing is…those are Yuuri’s rights. Viktor’s pain and Viktor’s death belong to Yuuri.

And that’s why one morning, four months and some days after his fateful match with Viktor, finds Yuuri on his feet and shaking with rage, eyes fixed on the screen on the wall.

It’s Viktor’s face that fills the screen and Yuuri would usually take the time to appreciate the way his bangs fall over his eye-patch just so, the dark leather highlighting the ethereal silver of his hair, because it doesn’t matter how long Yuuri has had the real thing within his grasp, a part of his heart will always ache at the way Viktor looks so heartstoppingly lovely.

This time though, his attention is taken up by the thin line of red on Viktor’s chin, evidence of a glancing blow that was more luck than anything else.

Viktor’s _fine_.

Even now, he’s grinning that wide fake smile Yuuri loathes, composed and controlled in a way that makes it quite clear that his brutal loss to Yuuri has not made him any less capable. Kingfisher is as dangerous as ever.

Yuuri can’t even bring himself to care because all he sees is that traitorous cut on Viktor’s pretty face and it makes something vile burn in his gut because it’s not his. There’s a mark on Viktor that’s not Yuuri’s and he can’t-

-there had been a moment, just a brief instant, where it seemed like the blow would not be so glancing after all, like it would strike home and tear through Viktor’s throat, so pale and delicate under the Carnival lights, and Yuuri had frozen in sheer terror, unable to move, unable to blink, unable to breathe, but it had been fine, Viktor had twisted away, it was fine, it is fine-

He can’t stand it.

Yuuri’s fingers itch with the dual urges to wipe away that tendril of blood and open it deeper to carve his own brand in its place.

He could always do both. Viktor would let him.

The wait after the match is agonizing. Yuuri paces in his small room, trying in vain to get rid the frenzied mix of anger and fear and something darker thrumming under his skin. His thoughts are a mess, jumping from one thing to another, each one all the more confusing than the last. Viktor is the only constant in them and even then, Yuuri can’t concentrate on the past or the present, is drawn towards the elusive future.

It feels like days have passed when the door opens and Viktor steps in, freshly showered and clothed, a band-aid adorning the right side of his face. Yuuri can’t stop staring at it.

Viktor grins ruefully when he notices where Yuuri’s attention is. He raises a hand to prod at the cut, a careless motion that makes Yuuri burns with things he doesn’t want to name.

“It’s not so easy to fight with a blind side,” he tells Yuuri, all laughter and good cheer, and Yuuri’s reaching for him before he can stop himself, grabbing the man by one slender wrist and pulling him hard against Yuuri. Viktor comes easily as always, throwing both arms around Yuuri and collapsing against him with a wide, flirty smile.

“Y _uu_ ri. Miss me?”

They’d seen each other last night. Viktor had kissed him this morning before he left for the match. There had been, realistically, no time for Yuuri to miss him.

He still had, painfully.

“Yes,” he admits, sliding one hand possessively into Viktor’s hair. It’s soft to the touch and slightly wet. With the other, the thumbs the edge of the band-aid. “In my time here, I can count on one hand the number of times you’ve been injured in a fight and still have fingers left over.”

“Mm yes, I am that good. Though you’d need a lot of fingers had you been around for the entirety of my tenure. But really, Yuuri, this doesn’t even count as an injury. It’s just a little cut.”

“I don’t like seeing it.”

Viktor’s smile becomes even brighter – Yuuri’s starting to wonder if he’ll be blinded one of these days; it’d be a rather pleasant way to lose his remaining eye – and he leans forward to rub his uninjured cheek against Yuuri’s.

“Of course you don’t. You didn’t put it there.” His voice dips lower, becoming a rumbling purr that travels straight to Yuuri’s groin. “Remember that time when you carved into my face with a nail? I used to put pressure on it when I jerked off, trying to remind my body of how it felt to have you on me, your hands and your eyes and your whole body.”

Yuuri remembers. He couldn’t forget if he tried. He’d licked the blood off his nail later, sucking hard to lap up the last of its taste. He’d felt so ashamed after, just not enough to stop imagining it again and again in dreams both waking and not.

“Do you want to?” Viktor asks, casually seductive and seeing nothing wrong with the idea. As always. Yuuri can’t judge, not when he’s just as bad. Viktor just read his mind after all.

Yuuri pulls Viktor back by the hair, gently for now, and spends a moment to just bask in the sight of his face. The band-aid is an anomaly that needs to go. And so Yuuri does just that, peeling it off in one, swift jerk that has Viktor jumping with a gasp, nearly knocking his head against Yuuri’s.

“Ow,” he says mildly. “That hurt, Yuuri.”

Yuuri flicks away the plaster and brings his hand to the edge of the cut. Viktor had been right – it’s barely enough to be called an injury. Just a shallow cut that’s an angry red, stretching from the side of his mouth to the bottom of his right ear. That doesn’t stop rage from flaring hot in Yuuri, a wild need to take the woman who did this apart piece by piece. Except that she’s dead and Yuuri’s left with her mark marring Viktor’s skin.

He knows that jealousy in usually an unreasonable emotion. But now, with Viktor in his arms and black fire in his heart, Yuuri realizes that knowing its irrationality is little defense against its overwhelming reality.

Or maybe he just doesn’t want to defend himself.

This is easier. Anger and jealousy rather than-

“I want it gone,” he says and he doesn’t know how long he’s been standing here with his hands on Viktor’s wound like a creep but the man in question doesn’t seem to mind. If anything, he looks delighted.

“That might take time. Not too long but a few days at least.”

And Yuuri’s known Viktor long enough to hear the challenge lurking under the careful nonchalance of his words, to read the glint in his bright blue eye and know that he wants this as much as Yuuri does, maybe more.

“You know that’s not what I meant.”

“Isn’t it? Maybe you should show me what you did mean, Yuu-ri.”

The puzzled widening of Viktor’s eyes, the pout on his lips and the coy tilt of his head – none of it fools either of them.

Yuuri turns around, Viktor still latched on to him, and walks the few steps towards the bed, pushing Viktor down on it and crawling atop him. There’s the beginning of a flush on Viktor’s face and his breathing’s already too fast. Yuuri is certain that something else is also hard but he doesn’t want to distract himself with that just yet.

He leans in to press a close-lipped kiss to Viktor’s mouth, pulling away before he can be coaxed into something more. Instead, he trails his lips over to the edge of the cut, parting his lips to taste the wound. Rusty sourness assaults his tongue and Yuuri chases the taste all the way to the other edge. And then he closes his mouth around the middle of the wound and _sucks_.

Viktor cries out, one hand clutching at Yuuri’s shoulder without any effort to pry him off. Yuuri keeps up the suction until Viktor starts squirming under him, their bodies rubbing together through layers of fabric, and then he lets go to lap at the fresh blood seeping through the cut.

It’s not even that he likes the taste. But it’s _Viktor’s_.

Viktor, whose eye is blown and hooded and hot enough to burn when Yuuri pulls back, licking his lips and tasting metal.

“Shall I show you more?”

The answer he gets is a glare that makes it quite clear what Viktor thinks of inane questions. But he does lean his head to the side, exposing the right half of his face.

“ _Yes_.”

Yuuri presses the edge of his thumbnail against the cut and presses down hard, swallowing hard at the way Viktor hisses at the pain and grabs Yuuri even tighter. A deep breath and then he’s carving his own cut along Viktor’s face, erasing that woman’s mark and replacing it with his own. Liquid crimson wells up from the opened, widened cut and trickles down Viktor’s chin, painting bright lines down his neck.

It’s beautiful.

“Happy now?” Viktor asks, voice husky as if he’s just run a marathon or had a cock rammed down his throat.

“Quite,” Yuuri replies, lifting his hand to his mouth and licking off the blood. Viktor’s gaze follows the motion fervently. “But I’m not done with you yet.”

“I’d hope not. I’m _hard_ , Yuuri. Do something about it.”

Viktor’s not the only one and Yuuri only realizes he’s been working his hips in slow, lazy grinds when the motion stops and he’s left with an aching erection trapped under two layers of clothing. Viktor’s in no better state, an impressive bulge straining against the soft cotton of his pants. Yuuri can’t resist reaching down to brush his palm against it, loving the way it makes Viktor twitch and swear under his breath in rough Russian.

He climbs off Viktor and the bed, stripping out of his clothes in record time to find Viktor with own shirt and pants tossed to the side. He looks like a debauched god, cock flushed with desire and face weeping blood from Yuuri’s hands.

He joins Viktor on the bed and is immediately pulled into a kiss, his mouth opening under the wet press of Viktor’s tongue. He sucks on the muscle, mind spinning from Viktor’s groans and the heat of his skin. He lets out a whimper of his own when Viktor breaks away from the kiss.

“You’re still angry, aren’t you?”

“Not at you,” Yuuri tells him honestly.

Viktor just grins, unsettlingly wide and devious.

“I know. But you can still take it out on me. I promise I’ll enjoy it.”

And this time, it’s Yuuri who laughs, some of the tension leaving his body as it shudders and shakes against Viktor who stares at him with a slightly miffed expression.

He’s ridiculous, this man. Yuuri wouldn’t have him any other way.

All of a sudden, he finds himself on his back with Viktor looming over him, arms caging him against the bed.

“You weren’t supposed to laugh, Yuuri.”

“Really? Then what should I do, Vitya?”

Viktor frowns, not as annoyed as he’s acting, and shifts so that he’s straddling Yuuri’s stomach. His cock’s still hard, flushed pink and curving a little, and Yuuri can’t help but stare at it, mouth watering just a little at the sight.

“Honestly, Yuuri, I’m disappointed,” Viktor tells him, effectively drawing Yuuri’s gaze away from his dick. Viktor’s face is an adequate replacement. “Here I thought you’d ravish me as soon as I stepped in the room but you just want to mark territory and _laugh_.”

And everything about this is hilarious enough that Yuuri should laugh even more but something about Viktor’s words nag at him, giving birth to a possibility that makes the old fury rise again to the surface.

“Vitya, did you get injured on purpose?”

He doesn’t get a verbal answer but Viktor’s lips curve into a smug grin that’s all the confirmation Yuuri needs.

Just like that, any and all levity is gone. Yuuri remembers watching helplessly as Viktor twisted and lunged and danced on the stage, graceful and monstrous and so very human. He remembers the way he’d felt when it seemed, for a moment, that-

He’s not gentle when he grabs Viktor and pushes him down to the bed, holding him down by the shoulders.

“You’re _mine_ ,” he seethes, leaning down far enough that his nose brushes Viktor’s. “No one’s allowed to hurt you. Not even yourself.”

He feels more than he sees the languid, maddening grin that stretches Viktor’s mouth.

“That so? Seems like I’ve misbehaved. Won’t you punish me, Yuuri?”

It’s not that he doesn’t know what Viktor’s doing. It’s not the first time he’s egged on Yuuri until he forgets good reason. It’s not even that Yuuri’s all that opposed to any of it. But he knows in his heart that this time is different. He knows why and he knows how it will end.

None of it stops him.

Viktor makes a noise like a wounded animal when Yuuri grabs his cock and starts jerking him off, dry and with too much friction. He writhes against the mattress, panting and whimpering, but never pulling away from Yuuri’s hand and its harsh ministrations.

Yuuri stops as abruptly as he started and Viktor makes that noise again, staring up at him with a pleading look that Yuuri finds easy to ignore.

He squeezes Viktor’s balls fleetingly before groping under them to press his fingers against his hole. It twitches under the touch.

“Pillow.”

Viktor wastes no time grabbing the one above his head and shoving it under his hips, spreading his legs even wider as he does.

“Is it really punishment if you’re more eager than I am?” Yuuri asks, already knowing the answer. “Maybe I should fuck you dry, leave you raw and bleeding.”

They’re empty words. He’d never do that and Viktor knows it if his shit-eating grin is anything to go by.

But it’s immediately replaced by a faux innocent expression that’s only somewhat ruined by the blood drying on Viktor’s face.

“You can do anything you want to me, Yuuri. I’m yours, aren’t I?”

He is. It makes lust rise in Yuuri right alongside something infinitely more precious.

“Yes,” is all he says before shoving three of his own fingers inside his mouth, getting them wet fast and filthy. Viktor watches with a wide eye, the blush on his cheeks brightening. It’s heady to have his eyes on him.

Viktor opens up easily when Yuuri prods one finger against his entrance, swallowing up the digit a little _too_ smoothly.

One piercing look is all it takes for Viktor to spill.

“I did it in the shower. Didn’t want to wait too long to have you in me.”

“Did you come?”

A sheepish smile and a nod is his answer.

Yuuri unceremoniously shoves in another finger and takes some satisfaction in the way it makes Viktor clench around them with a high-pitched moan. He thrusts them in and out once, twice before adding a third, squeezing past the tight ring of muscle to press right against Viktor’s prostate. He’s rewarded with a delicious whimper that makes his own cock leak, wanting nothing more than to be inside Viktor.

“That’s enough, isn’t it.”

And it’s not even a question but Viktor nods enthusiastically, moving his hips in little, jerky motions against Yuuri’s fingers.

He licks his palm, sloppy wet, and slicks up his cock. Viktor raises his hips invitingly and Yuuri wastes no time accepting, gripping his thigh with one hand and using the other to lead his length to Viktor’s entrance.

It’s _tight_. Saliva and rushed preparation aren’t quite enough and it shows in the way Viktor’s walls squeeze hard around him as if trying to cut Yuuri’s dick off but it’s still so good, the hot pressure making Yuuri feel a little crazy with need. He works himself all the way in, a slow and steady slide that doesn’t remain so slow and steady once he’s balls-deep in Viktor and ablaze with pleasure.

Viktor’s open-mouthed and red down to his chest, fingers twisted in the sheets in white-knuckled grips. His untouched cock bounces against his stomach with each of Yuuri’s rushed strokes. Yuuri eats him up with his eye, ravenously hungry.

His thrusts grow rough and hard, his fingers digging bruises into Viktor’s thighs as he holds him open and fucks into him with ragged breaths. He won’t last too long, he knows, but he wants to see Viktor come, wants to feel him tighten around Yuuri as he’s lost to his own pleasure. He manages to pause long enough to lift Viktor’s legs onto his shoulders, thanking him silently for keeping a figure skater’s flexibility despite all these years, and uses one hand to grab hold of Viktor’s cock, the other still clutching Viktor’s leg like a lifeline.

Viktor jolts, his entire body tensing and releasing, and the gravelly groan that escapes his mouth when Yuuri starts moving again makes him feel as if he could come from the sound alone.

Yuuri strokes Viktor as he fucks him, clumsy and erratic and on this side of painful, and Viktor welcomes it all with moans and whimpers pushed through bitten lips, body moving in uncertain ways as if he can’t decide between pushing up into Yuuri’s hand and driving back into his cock. He seems to settle on a blend of both and it’s a thing of beauty to watch Viktor move in tandem with him, sculpted muscles rippling as he chases his climax with the whole of his being. Yuuri would happily do this forever if it means he can keep watching Viktor like this, a pretty mess of loud and unrestrained passion.

“Yuuri, Yuuri, fuck, I want to-”

Viktor finally releases his death grip on the sheets to bury it in his own hair. Yuuri sees him tug hard at the silver strands and then he’s crying out and coming, painting Yuuri’s hand and his own torso in stripes of pearly white. His ass clamps tight around Yuuri, pulsing rhythmically in time to the soft _oh_ s and _ah_ s leaving Viktor’s lips.

Yuuri considers slowing down but instead finds himself angling to brush Viktor’s sensitive prostate. The shrill cry he gets in response makes his toes curl, makes him keep plunging into Viktor with little mercy, watching riveted as Viktor’s mouth twists into tortured shapes, shaky versions of Yuuri’s name mixed with half-formed pleas spilling incessantly from his lips.

“Yu-Yuuri, Yuuri, plea – I don’t – I’m not – oh god, _Yuuri_!”

And it only makes Yuuri fuck him faster, harder, nails biting deep into Viktor’s skin as he holds onto him for dear life and thrusts and thrusts and _thrusts_ , Viktor’s silky voice now hoarse driving him inexorably towards his own orgasm. He’s poised on the edge, frantically chasing the telltale burn in his gut, when Viktor calls for him, voice breaking on the syllables of Yuuri’s name, and that’s it, he’s lost.

It’s the wetness clinging to Viktor’s lashes that arrests his attention. Yuuri feels suspended in infinity for a moment as a single, pristine tear rolls down Viktor’s cheek and then he’s tumbling over the edge, shuddering and shouting and driving desperately into Viktor as his climax tears through him, leaving him drained and empty and obscenely sated.

He pulls out, hissing along with Viktor, and collapses on the man under him, smiling dopily when Viktor grumbles at the weight.

“I got to see you cry after all,” Yuuri mumbles, rolling off Viktor with great effort.

The incredulous look Viktor shoots him in response quickly morphs into a grin that he tries, and fails, to hide.

“Cruel, Yuuri.”

He reaches out to wipe away said tears, brushing the edge of the cut on Viktor’s chin as he does. It’s still bleeding sluggishly and will have to be cleaned soon. The sight of it makes Yuuri ache somewhere deep inside.

“You’re the one who wanted to be punished.”

And that’s the wrong thing to say because the sex-induced happy haze in Yuuri’s mind vanishes without a trace, leaving him in the cold embrace of reality. Viktor remains oblivious.

“Well, you certainly delivered,” he purrs, wrapping himself around Yuuri. “I feel punishingly satisfied.”

“That makes no sense,” Yuuri manages to say through lips that feel numb. This time, Viktor does notice.

“Yuuri? Is something wrong?”

He doesn’t answer. Can’t. His mind is a mess.

“I was lying before,” Viktor continues, voice soft and concerned. “I didn’t get injured on purpose. I just said that to get you in a moo- _oof_. Yuuri?”

The sudden rise of his voice at Yuuri’s name is what makes him conscious of the way he’s pulled Viktor close, arms suffocatingly tight around his larger form. Viktor is firm in his arms, solid and _alive_ , but with the anger and the jealousy both washed away by lust and its release, all Yuuri is left with is the fear he’d felt in that split second where it had seemed like Viktor would fall at that women’s hands.

No, not fear. Terror. Blood-curdling, earth-shattering terror.

Yuuri feels himself start to shake at the memory and holds Viktor impossibly tighter.

“Yuuri, you’re scaring me,” Viktor whispers softly into his ear. Yuuri knows that he’s not scared for himself but for Yuuri. He probably thinks Yuuri’s having another panic attack.

That would almost be preferable.

“I thought you were going to die. For a moment there, I thought…”

He can feel and hear Viktor suck in a sharp breath.

“Oh.” Viktor sighs, slow and subdued. “I did too.”

That only makes it worse.

“I was so-”                                                                   

 _Scared_. But Yuuri can’t make the word leaves his lips, not when he knows it’ll bring down the walls of this quiet reality they’ve built around themselves.

“Angry?” Viktor fills in for him, right and yet so horribly wrong. “It must be you, right? The one to kill me.”

He could say yes.

Viktor would accept and nothing would change. They’d go back to the being the same as they’ve always been, two men making the best of a sordid reality.

Yuuri could say yes, take the easy way out as a part of him wants to.

He doesn’t.

“No,” he says, quiet but certain. He shifts back so that he can see Viktor’s face and the confusion in his lone eye. “I wasn’t angry. That came later, after you were safe. I was…I was just so scared, Vitya. I thought I’d lose you and I was _terrified_.”

And Viktor - Viktor just gazes at him with a heartbreakingly tender expression.

“Oh, Yuuri-”

Yuuri doesn’t let him talk, hushing with a finger against his lips. He needs to say this. Now, before he can talk himself into deluding them both further.

“I’ve been wondering for a while about this. I never let myself linger on it for long because I was scared of the answer but today, it was too real and I just…can’t anymore. I can’t lose you.”

He stops. Takes a deep breath. Fails to calm his racing heart.

“I can’t kill you, Vitya.”

The silence is deafening and dark, and Yuuri doesn’t immediately realize that the latter is because he’s closed his eye. It’s screwed shut, tight enough to hurt, even his blind eye aching in ways it hasn’t in ages.

“Yuuri.” Viktor’s fingers are gentle as they caress his face. Yuuri opens his eye with considerable effort. The brightest blue meets his gaze, wide with surprise. Yuuri makes himself spill the words haunting his tongue.

“No, that’s not quite it. It’s not that I can’t kill you. I can’t…I can’t live without you. Afterwards. There’s no future I can see without you beside me.”

It sounds almost romantic when he puts it like that. It’s a grand declaration if there ever was one, negating one of the foundations of their relationship in one, painless blow.

Viktor opens his mouth and then closes it without a word, opting to just stare at Yuuri with an unreadable expression on his face. It makes him nervous but he knows it’s warranted so he braves it silently, hoping his determination, his certainty, shows in his face.

“Yura,” Viktor says at length, the diminutive easing something inside Yuuri. “Are you sure? You’ve always said…”

“I know. And I meant every word. A part of me is still obsessed with your death. I won’t lie and say it’s not important because it is. It’s what kept me going for so long, kept me fighting and winning and I don’t regret it. But, Vitya, didn’t you say I gave you life? Is it strange to think that you gave _me_ life too?”

“No, _lyubov moy_ , it’s not strange at all.”

Yuuri allows himself a shaky smile. Viktor traces the edges of it with his thumb.

“For the longest time, my love for you has been twisted up with the need to make you bleed and fall. But I never really had a plan for surviving you, you know? My world began and ended with you. And it still does but… it’s so much bigger now, full of warmth and life. We’re in a hell of a prison but when I’m with you, I feel blessed anyway. I just love you so much. I know you said you’d rather die by my hands but Vitya, I can’t bear to go on without you. There’s nothing in this hell that worthwhile without you.”

He’s gasping by the end, hot tears dripping down his face. Viktor wipes them away with something that might be reverence.

“It’s okay, it’s all fine, Yuuri, don’t cry.” He’s drawn into Viktor’s arms and he gratefully buries his face in Viktor’s neck. The cold metal of his collar presses against Yuuri’s face, a cruel reminder of their situation. He pulls back reluctantly.

“I’m sorry,” he says after several moments of mute staring. “I never wanted to disappoint you.”

Viktor laughs but it’s more incredulous than humorous.

“What are you talking about, Yuuri?”

Yuuri shrivels a little.

“You said…that if you had to die, you’d rather it be me. Because I’d do it with love. And now I’m chickening out even though I was the one to start it all. I’m sorry. So sorry.”

And it’s not that he doesn’t how ridiculous it sounds to apologize to someone for refusing to kill them but here, in this moment, he can’t afford to be anything but deadly serious.

Viktor, though, surprises him yet again.

“Oh, my Yura. How can I be disappointed when you feel so strongly for me? I loved you for the violence in your passion. I love you just as much, if not more, for the tenderness in it. You haven’t let me down, Yuuri. I understand you. I can’t ever imagine harming you. While I’ve never minded the idea of you killing me, it makes me feel…cherished to know that you can’t bring yourself to do it.”

“I do cherish you. More than I can put into words. But Viktor, you must know. We don’t have a future. Alone or together, we won’t live long here.”

“I know. I also know what happens to emotionally involved Deadmen who show each other mercy.”

Oh.

 _Oh_.

Yuuri had neglected to consider that.

He has only heard stories, hasn’t been here when they happened like Viktor. But yes, he knows of friends and lovers facing each other, matches ending in graceful losses only to be followed by bloody aftermaths and mysterious disappearances.

He knows.

“Vitya,” he chokes out, fresh tears trickling down his face. Viktor’s eye is a little too glossy. “What are we going to do?”

“We go on, Yuuri. We’ll fight when we have to and we’ll survive each time. And when the day comes that you and I are once again on opposite sides of that arena, then we’ll go together.”

Yuuri blinks away tears and stares at Viktor in confusion for a tense moment before the meaning of his words sink in, rearranging Yuuri’s whole world in one, devastating instant.

That’s really just par for the course with Viktor.

And Yuuri’s fine with it, in more ways than one.

“Together,” he repeats, tasting and testing the word, and liking it. “Will we make it till then?”

“We’ve made it this far. Believe in us, Yuuri.”

That sounds simpler than everything really is but just this once, Yuuri is content with that.

“Alright. I will. I do.”

Viktor smile is heart-shaped and adoring.

Yuuri loves him. He says as much.

“I love you too, my Yuuri. _Ya obozhayu tebya_.”

Love isn’t everything. It’s not magic.

They will never be normal. They will never have a family. They will never grow old together.

And love certainly won’t save them.

But, just for a little while, it’ll help them _live_.

That’s enough.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _Lyubov moy_ : My love  
>  _Ya obozhayu tebya_ : I adore you (Internet tells me it’s an intense way of expressing love.)
> 
> I started this with an idea of obsessive, murderous Viktuuri in mind but halfway through the third chapter, I realized that I wanted to write about love winning over obsession and violence.
> 
> Wow, I’m a sap.
> 
> If you want more weird and kinda creepy Viktuuri, I’m working on a long vampire fic. [You can find it here.](http://archiveofourown.org/works/11362935/chapters/25435863)

**Author's Note:**

> Comments and kudos are always appreciated!


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